The cover of the first volume of ‘The Law that Never Was.’ [Source: Radaris (.com) / Amazon (.com)]Two anti-tax protesters, William “Bill” Benson and Martin J. “Red” Beckman, publish a two-volume book, The Law that Never Was, that argues the 16th Amendment, the constitutional amendment giving the federal government the authority to levy income taxes, is null and void (see 1951-1967, 1970-1972, 1976-1978, and Early 1980s). The arguments in the book include the idea that because the amendment was ratified by different states with small differences in capitalization and punctuation, it was never properly ratified, as well as the argument that since Ohio was not yet a state when it ratified the amendment, Ohio’s ratification of the amendment renders it null. The authors include other arguments—the Internal Revenue Code is not “positive law”; the Internal Revenue Service is not a legitimate government agency; wages do not qualify as “taxable income”; “sovereign citizens” are exempt from income tax—all of which will be declared worthless and frivolous by various state and federal courts. The Anti-Defamation League will write that the arguments advanced by Benson and Beckman “are used again and again by tax protesters.… When a tax protest argument fails in court, the response among tax protesters is typically not to conclude that the argument was erroneous but rather to assume that the judge was wrong, corrupt, or deliberately misinterpreting the law.” Benson is a former investigator for the Illinois Internal Revenue Service, while Beckman is a virulent anti-Semite who accuses Jews of worshiping Satan and says the Holocaust was God’s “judgment upon a people who believe Satan is their god.” In 1991, Benson will be convicted of tax fraud and tax evasion, and will be sued by the US government to stop him from promoting an “abusive tax shelter” by selling what he calls a “Reliance Defense Package” while doing business as “Constitutional Research Associates.” In 2007, a federal court will find that his Reliance Defense Package “contained false or fraudulent information concerning tax advice,” and will note that a circuit court “explicitly rejected Benson’s arguments that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified.” Benson’s work will frequently be cited by tax protesters, many of whom will be fined or convicted for relying on his claims. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2001; Tax Protester Dossiers, 11/30/2009; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

Nine federal judges in Kansas sign a disciplinary complaint against Reverend Fred Phelps, the head of the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas (see November 27, 1955 and After). Phelps, as are many of his children and in-laws, is a lawyer. The judges add five of his children and a daughter-in-law to the complaint. The complaint alleges that the seven Phelps family members made false accusations against the judges. In 1987, Phelps’s position is weakened when he is censured for writing abusive letters to potential defendants threatening lawsuits if his demands are not met. In 1989, Phelps agrees to stop practicing law entirely in federal court, in return for his family members’ continuing privilege to practice law in those courts. His daughter Margie Phelps is suspended for practicing law in federal and state courts for one year, and his son Fred Phelps Jr. is suspended from those courts for six months. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001]

Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), is subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Seattle, as part of the federal effort to convict members of the violent white separatist group The Order (see Late December 1984 - April 1985). Butler escapes indictment, even though he has strong connections with The Order (see 1980-1982), and after the Order trial, denounces the Order members who testified against their former colleagues. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

David Tate, one of two members of the now-defunct white supremacist group The Order to escape the government’s massive prosecution of its members (see Late December 1984 - April 1985), is stopped by two Missouri state troopers conducting random vehicle and license checks. He is trying to flee to a Christian Identity (see 1960s and After) survivalist compound called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA). Tate opens fire on the two officers with a MAC-10 submachine gun, killing one and critically wounding the other. He is captured five days later hiding in a city park in Arkansas. He will be convicted of assault and murder, and sentenced to life without parole. Federal authorities will use the Tate incident to arrest the CSA leadership (see 1983); the organization will soon fold. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005; HistoryLink, 12/6/2006]

A University of California, Berkeley graduate student, John E. Hauser, picks up a package in the university’s computer science lab. The package is a bomb made up of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder. It explodes, costing Hauser four fingers from his right hand and severing arteries. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 4/14/1996; Washington Post, 1998] The bomb has apparently been in the lab for two or three days, left on top of a stack of three-ring binders. Hauser thought it was a file box for another student’s computer cards, and picked it up intending to identify its owner. Upon opening it, he hears an odd buzzing sound, then the bomb detonates. Ironically, the victim of a previous bombing, Professor Diogenes Angelakos (see July 2, 1982), hears the explosion, rushes to offer assistance, and ties a tourniquet around Hauser’s arm. Hauser will lose much of the use of his right arm, and will be forced to abandon his dreams of becoming an Air Force fighter pilot and perhaps an astronaut. He will later say, “There is not a day that goes by when I’m not reminded that I don’t have full use of my right hand… from trying to play racquetball to trying to pick up my daughter.” Of the bombing, Hauser will say, “This was as much a target of opportunity as anything else.” The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski once worked as a professor at UC-Berkeley. Both this bombing and the previous one are in Cory Hall, a building close to where Kaczynski once taught. Captain Bill Foley of the Berkeley campus police will later say: “He taught in Campbell Hall and had offices in one of our temporary buildings. If you did a triangle between Campbell and that temporary building you would hit Cory Hall at peak of the triangle.” Cory Hall also houses the engineering and computer science departments, known to be favorite targets of the Unabomber. [Washington Post, 11/27/1993; Washington Post, 4/14/1996] This bomb is more powerful than earlier Unabomber constructions, using a mix of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder to cause the explosion. The bomb’s shrapnel consists of tacks, nails, and bits of lead. Stamped on the end seal of the bomb’s pipe are the initials “FC,” which will later be found to stand for “Freedom Club.” [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005]

A suspicious package mailed to the Auburn, Washington, headquarters of the Boeing Aircraft Company is opened and safely disarmed by the local bomb squad. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The package containing a pipe bomb gets lost in Boeing’s internal mail system; the package is in the process of being returned to the apparent sender before it draws the attention of Boeing employees, who call the bomb squad. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996] The bomb will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski tried to destroy a Boeing aircraft with another bomb six years ago (see November 15, 1979). Like earlier bombs, this bomb contains the initials “FC” engraved on a metal component; authorities will later learn that “FC” stands for “Freedom Club.” [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005]

Dennis Ryan, 15, helps his father torture and kill a man. Michael Ryan, a partially disabled farmer in Rulo, Nevada, has for three years followed the violent white supremacist teachings of the Posse Comitatus (see 1969) through Posse leader James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978), who in 1982 told him to prepare for Armageddon. After speaking to Wickstrom for the first time in Kansas, Ryan told his son to quit playing football and begin practicing with a rifle. Wickstrom adopted Ryan as something of a protege, and steered some of his supporters towards him, making him a leader in local Posse circles. In 1985, Dennis, on his father’s orders, shoots James Thimm in the face. His father had become angry with Thimm. When Thimm does not die, the elder Ryan chains him inside a hog shed, kicks and beats him, and forces him to have sex with a goat. Dennis, again complying with his father’s orders, shoots off Thimm’s fingers and partially skins him. The elder Ryan sodomizes Thimm with a shovel and finally kicks him to death. The entire procedure takes two weeks. In 2001, Dennis Ryan will tell a reporter: “I don’t hold Wickstrom responsible for the crime I committed. I hold him responsible for getting my dad into it.… Wickstrom didn’t make my dad kill anybody, but he planted the seed. He planted it in my dad and then he helped it grow.” Author Daniel Levitas will agree, telling the reporter, “There could not have been the tragedy in Rulo if there was not a James Wickstrom.” Dennis Ryan wil add: “He was looking for something to believe in. He didn’t like blacks to begin with. I don’t think he was ever a popular person growing up. I think that it was the right time for the wrong thing. He was weak and you don’t let someone indoctrinate you into something like that unless you are weak-minded. He was all screwed up.” Former Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord member Kerry Noble will say of Wickstrom: “[He] is dangerous to the extent of provoking others. He is typical of leaders. They won’t do violent stuff, yet that’s all they’ll preach. They’ll push buttons, but they are extremely cowardly.” Dennis will recall: “Jim Wickstrom was the reason Dad got into this stuff. He’s the one who showed Dad how to talk to Yahweh, the reason we started getting guns and preparing for Armageddon. He was always so amazed at all the weaponry and how well Jim Wickstrom and his followers in Tigerton Dells (see 1978 - 1983) were armed.” After moving from Whiting, Kansas, to a farm in Rulo, Ryan ordered his family to steal farm equipment, livestock, and weapons in the name of Yahweh. Dennis will recall that the crimes were based on Wickstrom’s teachings, saying: “We were supposed to kill all Satan’s people. Dad was supposed to be the King of Israel and I was the Prince. He was supposed to die before the New Jerusalem was brought down from Yahweh, and then I’d be the king. I believed it 110 percent. All the way. Hell, I helped kill a man for it, and I never once questioned it.… Wickstrom wasn’t physically a constant presence in our lives, he wasn’t over all the time at the house or always on the phone with my dad, but he was there in that he was Dad’s teacher. We had all of his fliers and cassettes. Dad would even listen to Wickstrom while he was taking the garbage out.” Dennis will say that by 1985 Ryan had become obsessed with religious fervor and his conviction that Armageddon was imminent. He became more and more violent, focusing much of his rage on Luke Stice, the five-year-old son of follower Rick Stice, whom he savagely abused until March 1985, when he broke Luke’s neck. Rick Stice helped Ryan bury his child. Dennis will serve a 12-year prison sentence for his role in the death of James Thimm. Michael Ryan will be sentenced to death. Dennis, after serving his sentence, starting a family, and becoming a carpenter, will have no further contact with his father. He has little trust in organized religion. He says: “I look at the Bible and it scares me because I know how people twist it and use it for their own benefit. I don’t want some man up there telling me what God expects of me. I was told that before, and I killed someone.… So many people interpret the Bible so many different ways. I mean, take 9/11. That’s their religious beliefs. They’re no different than what my dad did except they actually carried it out. As far as killing thousands of people—that was his goal, too.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

The trial of 21 members of the white supremacist group The Order begins in a US district court in western Washington State (see Late December 1984 - April 1985). The trial judge is Walter T. McGovern. Eleven of the defendants decide to plead guilty and several agree to serve as government witnesses. The trial lasts into December 1985; 338 witnesses testify, and over 1,500 exhibits are presented. The defense attempts to discredit the Order members who turn state’s evidence, accusing them of creating a “self-serving fabric of lies,” and the prosecution of “trial by gossip.” Jurors will later tell news reporters that the most compelling evidence in the trial comes from the former Order members. The jury, composed of eight white women and four white men, deliberates for two weeks before issuing its verdict on December 30. All 10 defendants are found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy. Six are found guilty of other federal crimes. Judge McGovern will hand down stern sentences, ranging from 40 to 100 years in federal detention. [HistoryLink, 12/6/2006] Many of those convicted will remain unrepentant during their prison stays, and are viewed by radical right-wing extremists as “prisoners of war” and “heroes.” [Eye on Hate, 2003] Two other Order members, David Tate (see April 15, 1985) and Richard Scutari (see March 19, 1986), escape the Washington prosecution.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, research assistant Nicklaus Suino of the University of Michigan suffers burns and shrapnel wounds when he opens a package bomb at the home of psychology professor James V. McConnell. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). McConnell may be one of Kaczynski’s most personal targets. McConnell is a rich, flamboyant, and somewhat eccentric professor who espouses controversial theories about human behavior modification based on his research with flatworms. McConnell taught at the University of Michigan when Kaczynski was taking graduate courses in mathematics there. The package mailed to McConnell’s house comes with a one-page letter taped to the top, bearing a Salt Lake City postmark and reading in part: “I’d like you to read this book. Everybody in your position should read this book.” McConnell asks Suino to open it. The resulting explosion injures Suino; McConnell escapes with slight, temporary hearing loss but is profoundly shaken by the incident. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996]

Hugh C. Scrutton. [Source: Washington Post]In Sacramento, California, Hugh C. Scrutton is killed when he tries to remove what looks to be a road hazard from the parking lot—a block of wood with nails protruding from it inside a paper bag—behind his computer rental shop. The “hazard” is actually a bomb [BBC, 11/12/1987; Knight Ridder, 5/28/1995; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] consisting of three 10-inch pipes filled with a mixture of potassium sulfate, potassium chloride, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum powder. The bomb contains shrapnel consisting of sharp chunks of metal, nails, and splinters. It explodes with enormous force, killing Scrutton almost instantly. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Like earlier bombs, this bomb contains the initials “FC” engraved on a metal component; authorities later learn that “FC” stands for “Freedom Club.” [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). In 1967, Scrutton took a summer math course at the University of California at Berkeley while Kaczynski taught mathematics there; it is not known whether the two crossed paths during that time. [Washington Post, 4/14/1996]

Mark Alan Lingenfelter is convicted of attempting to kill the mayor of Weslaco, Texas, with a pipe bomb. The Lingenfelters, a family of Wisconsin dairy farmers with a fondness for the anti-government Posse Comitatus ideology (see 1969), are members of a UFO cult called the “Outer Dimensional Forces” (ODF), led by a man calling himself “Nodrog” who built a base for UFOs to land. The ODF’s prize possession is a fifth-dimensional Armageddon Time Ark which would be used to rescue a chosen few from Armageddon; Nodrog sells spaces aboard the craft. After ODF members clashed with local authorities in Weslaco, Lingenfelter attempted to kill the mayor with a pipe bomb that blew up a car in front of the paint store where the mayor works. Merlon Lingenfelter Sr. initially represents his son in court; his pronouncements are characterized as bizarre by some observers. The senior Lingenfelter tells a Brownsville, Texas, reporter, “Your president, all supporting bloodsuckers of the United States, plus all bloodsuckers of Canada and Mexico, have been duly served and convicted in the Outer Dimensional Forces Foursquare Court at Alternate Base, of triple high treason.” Mark Alan Lingenfelter chooses to represent himself as the trial wears on, but he is convicted and jailed. [Mark Pitcavage, 1997]

Carl Messick, the “security chief” of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), fires 19 shots at the car of a Georgia couple who accidentally drive onto the COTC grounds. Messick will later be sentenced to seven years in prison. This is the first reported problem a COTC member has with the law. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Joseph Scheidler, the president of the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN—see 1980), and three PLAN members enter the Summit Women’s Health Clinic in Middletown, Delaware. Scheidler later says he is “casing the place,” according to court records. The day after the visit, protesters vandalize the clinic, seriously damaging equipment. [Ms. Magazine, 12/2002]

Randall Terry, a former used-car salesman and anti-abortion activist, forms a group he calls “Operation Rescue” in Binghamton, New York. Terry is a protege of Joseph Scheidler (see 1980 and 1985). Terry’s organization focuses on what it calls “rescues,” usually full-scale blockades of women’s health clinics. In many of these actions, hundreds of activists will be arrested. [Kushner, 2003, pp. 38-39]

Richard Scutari. [Source: Richard Scutari / Eye on Hate (.com)]Richard Scutari, one of two members of the now-defunct white supremacist group The Order to escape the government’s massive prosecution of the group’s members (see Late December 1984 - April 1985), is arrested without incident at a brake shop in San Antonio, Texas, where he has worked for months; he is carrying a .45 caliber pistol but does not use it. Scutari has been on the FBI’s Most Wanted List since September 1985. He will plead guilty to racketeering, conspiracy, and armed robbery charges, and will be sentenced to 60 years in federal prison. During his trial, he will tell the court, “I had no choice but to strike out against a satanic government.” Scutari will become a hero of the radical right while in prison, some of whom will call him a “prisoner of war.” [Eye on Hate, 2003; HistoryLink, 12/6/2006]

Members of the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN—see 1980 and 1986) enter a women’s health clinic, the Pensacola Ladies Center, in Pensacola, Florida. They attack the clinic administrator, throwing her down the stairs; attack and injure an official of the National Organization for Women (NOW); blockade the clinic; and wreck medical equipment. During the attack, PLAN president Joseph Scheidler stands outside, praising the attackers and publicly claiming credit for the incident. The clinic will close for several days for repairs. [National Organization for Women, 9/2002] The Ladies Center was firebombed twice in 1984 by anti-abortion activists (see 1984). [Kushner, 2003, pp. 38] One of the protesters who takes part in the blockade and assault is James Kopp, who in 1998 will murder an abortion provider (see October 23, 1998). [Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]

National Organization for Women logo. [Source: National Organization for Women]The National Organization for Women (NOW) files a lawsuit against Joseph Scheidler, Scheidler’s organization Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN—see 1980), and other anti-abortion organizations. NOW is joined in the suit by the Delaware Women’s Health Organization and the Pensacola Ladies Center (see March 26, 1986), and later the Summit Women’s Health Organization (see 1986). The lawsuit is part of a strategy devised by NOW president Eleanor Smeal to use federal antitrust laws to charge Scheidler and others with being part of a nationwide criminal conspiracy to close women’s health clinics through the use of violence and terror. The suit becomes known as NOW v. Scheidler. [National Organization for Women, 9/2002; Ms. Magazine, 12/2002] The lawsuit seeks a nationwide injunction to stop the clinic invasions, and asks the courts to make those responsible for the attacks pay for the damage they caused. In 2002, the future president of NOW, Kim Gandy, will say of the lawsuit: “NOW decided we had to stop the violence. Scheidler and his gang were calling in blitzes—they would attack clinics without warning and hold staff and patients hostage. Clinics were being blockaded and invaded. If we did not act, we thought clinics would not be able to stay open.” NOW attorney Fay Clayton will say the case seeks “to ensure that the constitutional right [to abortion] recognized [in 1973] would exist not just in theory, but in reality.” According to a 2002 Ms. Magazine report, the case only targets anti-abortion protesters who engage in criminal acts such as criminal trespass, assault, and conspiracy to block access to clinics. It makes no effort to halt peaceful protests as protected by the First Amendment. The lawsuit claims that PLAN and others engaged in what the federal racketeering law prohibits: namely, a “pattern of racketeering activity,” including the use of fear, force, and violence, in order to prevent people from receiving and providing legal abortions. Clayton maintains that the actions met the legal definition of organized crime. [Ms. Magazine, 12/2002]

A young Timothy McVeigh, wearing quasi-military garb. [Source: ForbiddenTruth (.com)]Timothy McVeigh, a distant, solitary young man in Pendleton, New York, takes a job as a security guard with an armored car company after graduating from Starpoint High School in 1986. (Some sources will inaccurately give his home town as nearby Lockport, New York; he did live there for a time as a child.) He grew up as an outgoing and easygoing young man, but began to withdraw into himself after his mother began leaving home (and having extramarital affairs) in 1977. McVeigh began retreating into himself even more after his parents separated in 1984 and his mother left for Florida with his two sisters. He received his first rifle, a .22 caliber gift from his gun-collector grandfather, when he was 13, and was immediately fascinated with the weapon, though he never became interested in hunting, as so many others in the area were (McVeigh always displayed a strong empathy towards animals). He joined the National Rifle Association in 1985. In high school, he told counselors he wanted to be a gun shop owner; though he earned a Regents Scholarship upon graduating, he only spent a few months at a nearby business college before deciding further schooling was not for him. McVeigh has already begun to turn his father’s home into a survivalist compound, stockpiling water, gunpowder, and other items in the basement and amassing a collection of magazines like Guns & Ammo and SCOPE Minuteman, a local publication distributed by a Niagara County gun advocacy organization. His father, William “Bill” McVeigh, will later explain: “I guess he thought that someday a nuclear attack or something was going to happen. That was my feeling. You know, he was ready for anything.” [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 44, 49, 65-66, 70; Serrano, 1998, pp. 11-20; Douglas O. Linder, 2006]First Exposure to African-Americans, Survivalism - McVeigh, a 19-year-old sometimes called by the disparaging nickname “Noodle” who is unable to connect with women on almost any level due to his shyness, works for a firm currently called Burke Armor Inc., which will later rename itself as Armored Services of America, though he has a considerable amount of expertise with computers and conceivably could have landed a job in that field. McVeigh works out of a depot in Cheektowaga, near Buffalo, mostly delivering money to and from banks and stores, quickly earning a reputation as a reliable, hardworking employee. He works for eight months with a partner, Jeff Camp. This job gives him his first opportunity to work closely with African-Americans; the region of upstate New York he resides in is almost devoid of African-Americans, and the area has long supported a large and active Ku Klux Klan chapter. McVeigh learns from some of his fellow employees about inner-city strife and other related racial and economic issues. Later, he will recall making special deliveries at the beginning and end of each month to check-cashing firms; sometimes he would have to wade through long lines of African-American welfare recipients, and on occasion would brandish his gun to get through the lines. He often drives by African-American homes and sees the residents sitting on their porches, one of the reasons he begins calling African-Americans “porch monkeys.” He also begins reading “survivalist” books such as The Turner Diaries (see 1978), The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and The Poor Man’s James Bond. Discomfits Co-Workers with Militia-Style Appearance - Several months into the job, as Camp will recall, McVeigh begins coming to work “looking like Rambo.” McVeigh has frequently expressed an interest in guns—some sources say he calls guns “the great equalizer[s]”—and has a licensed handgun for his job along with other weapons, including an AR-15 assault rifle. On one particular morning, he comes in with a sawed-off shotgun and ammunition bandoliers slung in an “X” over his chest, apparently as a joke meant to surprise and discomfit his colleagues. “It looked like World War III,” Camp will recall. McVeigh’s supervisor refuses to let McVeigh go out on the truck, angering him. Camp will later recall: “He used to bring in two or three guns that he carried all the time. He had a .45 and a .38. He had a Desert Eagle [pistol]. That thing was huge.” (McVeigh will later sell the Desert Eagle, calling it “unreliable.”) McVeigh, Camp will continue, is “intense.… He ate a lot. I don’t know if it was nervousness. Sometimes he could be quiet. Some days he was hyper, some days he wouldn’t say a word.” Buys Property for Shooting Range - After getting his first gun permit, McVeigh buys 10 acres of wooded property north of Olean, New York, with a partner, David Darlak, and the two use it as a shooting range. As teenagers, he and Darlak formed their version of a “survivalist group” after watching movies such as The Day After, a television movie about the aftermath of a nuclear strike in Kansas. A neighbor, Robert Morgan, later recalls his father calling the police to complain about the incessant gunfire. “My dad turned him in,” Morgan will recall. “One day it sounded like a war out there. Sometimes he’d come down during the week, sometimes the weekend. He had on hunting clothes. Camouflage.” McVeigh continues his shooting activities even after Darlak loses interest. Joins US Army - On May 24, 1988, spurred by his partner Darlak, he joins the Army (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990). [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 54-57, 72, 82; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 20-24; Douglas O. Linder, 2006]

The FBI’s sketch of the as-yet-unidentified ‘Unabomber.’ [Source: FBI]Gary Wright, the owner of CAAMS Inc., a Salt Lake City, Utah, computer shop, is injured when he attempts to remove a “road hazard” at the rear entrance of his shop. The “hazard” is actually a bomb, similar to one that killed another computer shop owner in Sacramento, California, over a year ago (see December 11, 1985). A secretary saw a man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses leave the bag containing the bomb; she becomes the first eyewitness in what will later become the “Unabomber” investigation (see April 3, 1996). [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The “Unabomber” is improving his skills; this bomb contains a more sophisticated triggering device than earlier constructions. [World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] Almost six years ago, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber,” planted another bomb in Salt Lake City (see October 8, 1981). But for now, the FBI has no knowledge of Kaczynski’s identity. It has, however, found what it calls “an absolute link” between the Wright bombing and the “Unabom” serial bombings that have been going on since 1978 (see May 25-26, 1978). Federal bomb expert Ron Wolters says the bombs in the different cases display a high level of similarity. Police describe the as-yet-unidentified bomber as a disgruntled academician or computer worker. [Chicago Sun-Times, 2/24/1987]

Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), is indicted, along with 12 of his followers and fellow racists, by a federal grand jury for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government by violence, conspiring to kill federal officials, and transporting stolen money across state lines. The sedition was allegedly developed at a 1983 Aryan Nations Congress meeting (see 1981 and After). The case is tried in Fort Smith, Arkansas, before an all-white jury. The goverment is unable to prove the case, and Butler and his fellow defendants are all acquitted. The judge refuses to accept the jury’s statement that it is deadlocked on two counts, a ruling that leads to the blanket acquittals. Other white supremacists acquitted in the trial are Louis Beam (see February 1992), Richard Wayne Snell (see 9:00 p.m. April 19, 1995), and Robert Miles. US Attorney J. Michael Fitzhugh says he believes the prosecution proved its case, but “we accept the verdict of the jury.” Six of the defendants are serving prison terms for other crimes. The prosecution says Butler, Beam, Miles, and the other 10 defendants had robbed banks and armored trucks of $4.1 million, including about $1 million that still is missing. The defense countered that the prosecution’s case was based on conspiracy theories given by the prosecution’s chief witness, James Ellison, an Arkansas white supremacist serving 20 years for racketeering. During the proceedings, Butler undergoes quadruple bypass surgery and a second surgery to unblock his carotid artery, all at government expense. [Associated Press, 4/8/1998; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010] Some time after the trial, one of the jurors marries one of the defendants, David McGuire. [Kaplan, 2000, pp. 19]

The cover of ‘Hunter.’ [Source: ce399 (.com)]William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), oversees the creation of a publishing firm for the Alliance, National Vanguard Books. It will publish a number of works, most prominently a reprint of The Turner Diaries and Pierce’s second novel, Hunter, which tells the story of a white assassin who kills minorities, particularly interracial couples. He dedicates Hunter to Joseph Paul Franklin, convicted of the sniper murders of two African-American men (see 1980). Pierce will later tell his biographer that he wrote Hunter as a deliberate motivational tool for assassins, saying, “From the beginning with Hunter, I had this idea of how fiction can work as a teaching tool in mind.” In 2002, the Center for New Community will write, “Like The Turner Diaries, the book has inspired several real-life acts of racist terror” (see January 4, 2002 and After). In 1991, National Vanguard will expand into releasing audiotapes, which by December 1992 will spawn a radio show, American Dissident Voices. In 1993, it will begin publishing comic books targeted at children and teenagers. [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

Anti-abortion protesters gather to voice their opposition to abortion. [Source: CNN]Operation Rescue California, a subgroup of the national anti-abortion organization (see 1986), under the leadership of Kevin White, stages “rescue campaigns” against a number of women’s clinics in California. The organization dubs the campaign “No Place to Hide.” Some of the most blatant harassment of doctors, nurses, and patients recorded by anti-abortion activists results from this campaign. [Kushner, 2003, pp. 38-39]

Ben Klassen, the founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), travels to California to ask John Metzger, son of neo-Nazi White Aryan Resistance (WAR) founder Tom Metzger, about taking over the COTC. Klassen is 70 and actively looking for a successor. Metzger, saying he “wouldn’t want to be affiliated with a church,” declines. Metzger’s WAR, a nexus for neo-Nazi “skinheads” around the Northwest, is in temporary decline, having suffered a $12.5 million judgment against it from a civil suit filed on behalf of an Ethiopian murder victim and having been embarrassed by the disclosure of the fact that the Metzgers had spent WAR funds on personal items such as Tom Metzger’s toupee. COTC will ultimately benefit from the split, gaining many disenchanted WAR members. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Entrance to Fort Riley, Kansas. [Source: US Military (.com)]Terry Nichols, a 33-year-old Michigan farmer and house husband described as “aimless” by his wife Lana, joins the US Army in Detroit. He is the oldest recruit in his platoon and his fellow recruits call him “Grandpa.” During basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, Nichols meets fellow recruits Timothy McVeigh (see 1987-1988), who joined the Army in Buffalo, New York, and Arizona native Michael Fortier. All three share an interest in survivalism, guns, and hating the government, particularly Nichols and McVeigh; unit member Robin Littleton later recalls, “Terry and Tim in boot camp went together like magnets.” For McVeigh, Nichols is like the older brother he never had; for Nichols, he enjoys taking McVeigh under his wing. Nichols also tells McVeigh about using ammonium nitrate to make explosives he and his family used to blow up tree stumps on the farm. The three are members of what the Army calls a “Cohort,” or Cohesion Operation Readiness and Training unit, which generally keeps soldiers together in the same unit from boot camp all the way through final deployment. It is in the Army that McVeigh and Nichols become enamored of the novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), which depicts a United States racially “cleansed” of minorities and other “undesirables” (McVeigh is already familiar with the novel—see 1987-1988). All three are sent to the 11 Bravo Infantry division in Fort Riley, Kansas, where they are finally separated into different companies; McVeigh goes to tank school, where he learns to operate a Bradley fighting vehicle as well as becoming an outstanding marksman. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; New York Times, 5/28/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 91-95; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 30; Nicole Nichols, 2003] McVeigh later says he joined the Army because he was disillusioned with the “I am better than you because I have more money” mindset some people have, and because he was taken with the Army’s advertisement that claimed, “We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.” [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] Fellow unit member Specialist Ted Thorne will later recall: “Tim and I both considered ourselves career soldiers. We were going to stay in for the 20-plus years, hopefully make sergeant major. It was the big picture of retirement.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 31]Nichols Leaves Army, Tells of Plans to Form 'Own Military Organization' - In the spring of 1989, Nichols, who planned on making a career of military service, leaves the Army due to issues with an impending divorce and child care, but his friendship with McVeigh persists. Fellow soldier Glen Edwards will later say that he found Nichols’s choice to serve in the Army unusual, considering his virulent hatred of the US government: “He said the government made it impossible for him to make a living as a farmer. I thought it strange that a 32-year-old man would be complaining about the government, yet was now employed by the government. Nichols told me he signed up to pull his 20 years and get a retirement pension.” Before Nichols leaves, he tells Edwards that he has plans for the future, and Edwards is welcome to join in. Edwards will later recall, “He told me he would be coming back to Fort Riley to start his own military organization” with McVeigh and Fortier. “He said he could get any kind of weapon and any equipment he wanted. I can’t remember the name of his organization, but he seemed pretty serious about it.” [New York Times, 5/28/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 96, 101]McVeigh Continues Army Career, Described as 'Strange,' 'Racist,' but 'Perfect Soldier' - McVeigh does not leave the Army so quickly. He achieves the rank of sergeant and becomes something of a “model soldier.” He plans on becoming an Army Ranger. However, few get to know him well; only his closest friends, such as Nichols, know of his passion for firearms, his deep-seated racism, or his hatred for the government. McVeigh does not see Nichols during the rest of his Army stint, but keeps in touch through letters and phone calls. Friends and fellow soldiers will describe McVeigh as a man who attempts to be the “perfect soldier,” but who becomes increasingly isolated during his Army career; the New York Times will describe him as “retreating into a spit-and-polish persona that did not admit nights away from the barracks or close friendships, even though he was in a ‘Cohort’ unit that kept nearly all the personnel together from basic training through discharge.” His friends and colleagues will recall him as being “strange and uncommunicative” and “coldly robotic,” and someone who often gives the least desirable assignments to African-American subordinates, calling them “inferior” and using racial slurs. An infantryman in McVeigh’s unit, Marion “Fritz” Curnutte, will later recall: “He played the military 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All of us thought it was silly. When they’d call for down time, we’d rest, and he’d throw on a ruck sack and walk around the post with it.” A fellow soldier, Todd Regier, will call McVeigh an exemplary soldier, saying: “As far as soldiering, he never did anything wrong. He was always on time. He never got into trouble. He was perfect. I thought he would stay in the Army all his life. He was always volunteering for stuff that the rest of us wouldn’t want to do, guard duties, classes on the weekend.” Sergeant Charles Johnson will later recall, “He was what we call high-speed and highly motivated.” McVeigh also subscribes to survivalist magazines and other right-wing publications, such as Guns & Ammo and his favorite, Soldier of Fortune (SoF), and keeps an arsenal of weapons in his home (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). Regier will later tell a reporter: “He was real different. Kind of cold. He wasn’t enemies with anyone. He was kind of almost like a robot. He never had a date when I knew him in the Army. I never saw him at a club. I never saw him drinking. He never had good friends. He was a robot. Everything was for a purpose.” [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 86; Serrano, 1998, pp. 30; Nicole Nichols, 2003] McVeigh is taken with the increasing number of anti-government articles and advertisements in SoF, particularly the ones warning about what it calls the impending government imposition of martial law and tyranny, and those telling readers how to build bombs and other items to use in “defending” themselves from government aggression. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 27-28] McVeigh is not entirely “by the book”; he knows his friend Michael Fortier is doing drugs, but does not report him to their superior officers. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] McVeigh is promoted to sergeant faster than his colleagues; this is when he begins assigning the undesirable tasks to the four or five black specialists in the group, tasks that would normally be performed by privates. “It was well known, pretty much throughout the platoon, that he was making the black specialists do that work,” Regier will recall. “He was a racist. When he talked he’d mention those words, like n_gger. You pretty much knew he was a racist.” The black soldiers complain to a company commander, earning McVeigh a reprimand. Sergeant Anthony Thigpen will later confirm Regier’s account, adding that McVeigh generally refuses to socialize with African-Americans, and only reluctantly takes part in company functions that include non-whites. Captain Terry Guild will later say McVeigh’s entire company has problems with racial polarization, “[a]nd his platoon had some of the most serious race problems. It was pretty bad.” In April 1989, McVeigh is sent to Germany for two weeks for a military “change-up program.” While there, he is awarded the German equivalent of the expert infantryman’s badge. In November 1989, he goes home for Thanksgiving with Fortier, and meets Fortier’s mother Irene. In late 1990, McVeigh signs a four-year reenlistment agreement with the Army. [New York Times, 5/4/1995]McVeigh Goes on to Serve in Persian Gulf War - McVeigh will serve two tours of duty in the Persian Gulf War, serving honorably and winning medals for his service (see January - March 1991 and After). Nichols and McVeigh will later be convicted of planning and executing the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Ben Klassen, the founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973), publishes another book, this one titled Rahowa! This Planet is All Ours. The term “rahowa” is short for the COTC “battle cry” RAcial HOly WAr. In the book, Klassen declares: “RAHOWA! In this one word we sum up the total goal and program of not only the Church of the Creator, but of the total White Race, and it is this: We take up the challenge. We gird for total war against the Jews and the rest of the g_ddamned mud races of the world—politically, militantly, financially, morally, and religiously. In fact, we regard it as the heart of our religious creed, and as the most sacred credo of all. We regard it as a holy war to the finish—a racial holy war. Rahowa! is INEVITABLE. It is the Ultimate and Only solution.” Klassen predicts: “No longer can the mud races and the White Race live on the same planet and survive. It is now either them or us. We want to make damn sure it is we who survive. This planet is from now on all ours, and will be the one and only habitat for our future progeny for all time to come.” [Anti-Defamation League, 1993]

A number of anti-abortion protesters, including many members of Operation Rescue (see 1986), are arrested outside the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. They spend several weeks together in jail, and it is believed that while there, many of them join the “Army of God,” an anti-abortion organization devoted to using violence to prevent abortions (see 1982 and August 1982). One of the jailed protesters is James Kopp, who in 1998 will murder an abortion doctor (see October 23, 1998). Others include Lambs of Christ leader Norman Weslin; Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, who will later shoot another abortion doctor (see August 19, 1993); and John Arena, who will later be charged with using butyric acid to attack abortion clinics and providers. According to government documents, Kopp is already a leader of the Army of God, and may recruit new members during his stay in jail. [Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006; National Abortion Federation, 2010]

The National Organization for Women (NOW) expands its NOW v. Scheidler lawsuit against anti-abortion activists to include Randall Terry and Operation Rescue, a “spin-off” organization (see 1986) of another defendant in the lawsuit, the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN—see 1980 and 1986). Terry and Operation Rescue routinely blockade abortion clinics, sometimes using physical force. [National Organization for Women, 9/2002]

Courtroom sketch of Lana Padilla. [Source: Lawrence Journal-World]Michigan realtor Lana Padilla files for divorce from her husband Terry Nichols. Padillla, frustrated with her husband’s tendency to drift from job to job, was disappointed in his failure to commit to an Army career (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) and tired of trying to motivate him to begin a career. Padilla decides to move from their home in Michigan to Las Vegas, where the real estate market is booming. The divorce will be finalized in July 1989. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 72-74]

James Nichols, a Michigan farmer, anti-government white separatist, and the brother of Terry Nichols (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), formulates a plan to use a “megabomb” to destroy an Oklahoma City federal building; an unnamed FBI informant will later tell the FBI that James Nichols specifically indicates the Murrah Federal Building. Nichols, who says he is upset over the US’s “role” in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, shares the plan with the informant, who will swear to the information in 1995, after James’s brother Terry Nichols is arrested for helping destroy the Murrah Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). “[James] Nichols… made a specific reference to a federal building in Oklahoma City and began looking through the toolshed and workbench for a newspaper clipping depicting the Oklahoma City building,” the informant will say, according to an FBI affidavit. Nichols is unable to find the newspaper clipping, the informant will say, and instead draws a diagram remarkably similar to the Murrah Building. Nichols “later located a newspaper article containing a reference to the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and showed it” to the informer, the affidavit says. The informer is a regular visitor to the Nichols farm. [New York Times, 6/13/1995; Nicole Nichols, 2003] James Nichols routinely stamps US currency with red ink in a protest against the government, and calls his neighbors “sheeple” for obeying authority “like livestock.” A neighbor, Dan Stomber, will recall Nichols criticizing him and others for using drivers’ licences and Social Security cards, and for voting and paying taxes. “He said we were all puppets and sheeple,” Stomber will tell a reporter. “That was the first time I ever heard that word.” Stomber will not recall Nichols discussing any plans to bomb any federal buildings. [New York Times, 4/24/1995] After the Oklahoma City bombing, a friend of Nichols, an Indiana seed dealer named Dave Shafer, will tell authorities that Nichols showed him a diagram of a building remarkably similar to the Murrah Building, still under construction at the time, and said that building would be an excellent target. Shafer will say that he thought Nichols was joking. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 110] It is possible that Shafer and the unnamed FBI informant are the same person. Five years ago, a group of white supremacists had conceived of a plan to destroy the Murrah Building (see 1983).

The Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973) loses its tax-exempt privilege (see 1982-1983). A review by Macon County tax officials concludes that the church’s North Carolina property does not qualify for religious tax exemptions. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

The National Organization for Women (NOW) expands its lawsuit against anti-abortion advocates (see June 1986), adding charges of extortion and violation of federal racketeering laws. NOW brings charges under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a law originally designed to address organized crime. [National Organization for Women, 9/2002]

Richard Butler, the head of the white separatist and neo-Nazi organization Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s), commemorates the 100th birthday of Adolf Hitler by inviting white racists and separatists to the Hayden Falls, Idaho, compound of the organization for a celebration. The gathering, which features music by white power skinhead rock bands, is designed to reach out to younger whites. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Norma McCorvey, better known as “Jane Roe” in the landmark Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade that made abortions legal throughout the US (see January 22, 1973), has her house and car damaged by shotgun fire early in the morning. McCorvey, a pro-choice activist, goes into hiding. Neither pro-choice nor anti-abortion groups take credit for the shooting, but spokespersons from both sides of the debate say the shooting is symbolic of a dangerously intensifying battle over abortion rights. McCorvey publicly acknowledged her identity as the Roe plaintiff last year. [Associated Press, 4/6/1989]

Author Richard Kelly Hoskins, in his book Vigilantes of Christiandom, puts forth the concept of the “Phineas Priesthood.” Hoskins is a Christian Identity adherent (see 1960s and After). The idea comes from an obscure Biblical character, “Phinehas,” an Israelite who used a spear to kill a “race-mixing” fellow Israelite and the Midianite woman with whom he had had sexual relations. Hoskins concocts the idea of a “brotherhood” of “Phineas Priests,” self-professed “warriors” who would use extreme violence against “race-mixers,” gays, abortionists, and others. Over time, some “Phineas Priests” will commit bombings and bank robberies around Spokane, Washington (see October 8, 1996). In 2002, two Aryan Nations (see Early 1970s) splinter groups will openly adopt “Phineas Priest” names or symbols. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

In Britain, offshoots of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976), including the “Justice Department” and the “Animal Rights Militia,” injure several people using letter bombs and envelopes rigged with poisoned razor blades. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005] Among the injured are a furrier and his three-year-old daughter. Some of the razor blades are dipped in rat poison; one letter reads in part: “Dear animal killing scum! Hope we sliced your finger wide open and that you now die from the rat poison we smeared on the razor blade.” The letter is signed, “Justice Department strikes again.” British authorities believe that one person, ALF activist Keith Mann, is the leader of the Justice Department, though they cannot be sure. Mann will be sentenced to 11 years in prison for terrorist-related activities. A Justice Department statement explains that the group is willing to go farther than ALF, stating: “The Animal Liberation Front achieved what other methods have not while adhering to nonviolence.… A separate idea was established that decided animal abusers had been warned long enough.… [T]he time has come for abusers to have but a taste of the fear and anguish their victims suffer on a daily basis.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002]

James Wickstrom (see 1975 - 1978), the Posse Comitatus (see 1969) leader who recently spent over a year in prison for impersonating a public official (see 1983), is again sentenced to 38 months in prison for his role in a plot to print and distribute $100,000 in counterfeit bills for the 1988 Aryan Nations World Congress. The counterfeit bills were to help fund paramilitary activities. By the time Wickstrom is released in 1994, the Posse Comitatus has all but dissolved (see 1984). In 2001, author Daniel Levitas will say: “Wickstrom’s light has been fading ever since the compound at Tigerton Dells shut down (see 1983). Wickstrom’s heyday was in the period from 1978 to 1985. That was his period of peak influence. Since then he’s hopscotched around and been able to gather small groups of people around him, but he’ll never return to his former stature in the movement.” Wickstrom will continue speaking to small groups, selling his speeches through the mail and the Internet, and running an obscure weekly Internet-based radio show, which he will abandon in 2003. He will attempt to take leadership of a splinter faction of the disintegrating Aryan Nations organization (see 2003, 2004, and September 2004 and After). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2004]

Ben Klassen, the 72-year-old founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), announces that he has found a successor (see 1988). Klassen announces that Rudy “Butch” Stanko, currently serving a six-year sentence for selling tainted meat, will take over once he is released from prison. Skanko is, according to Klassen, an “outstanding man, who has been tested by fire and torture, by success and adversity.” Stanko is the former owner of the Nebraska Beef Packer and Cattle King companies, until he was proven by investigative reporters to have sold unsanitary meat to school cafeterias. He is serving the final year of a six-year prison term. Klassen became aware of Stanko through his book The Score, an intensely anti-Semitic screed accusing Jews of destroying his meat-packing corporation. Stanko writes in the February 1990 issue of the COTC’s newsletter “Racial Loyalty”: “It is a great honor and a supreme challenge to be selected as the next Pontifex Maximus of the Church of the Creator.… It is my avowed purpose to provide the necessary leadership, organizational and promotional talents to… smash the tyrannical Jewish network once and for all time. It is my hope and dedicated goal to bring this about in the next decade, the last decade history has allowed us for the final showdown.” Unfortunately for his dreams of leadership, Stanko will be arrested three months after his release from prison for speeding, obstructing a police operation, criminal mischief, and driving without a license; he will twice attack police officers during the booking procedure. The COTC will cut ties with Stanko, claiming that he is no longer interested in being part of the organization. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Marife Nichols in 1997. [Source: CNN]Terry Nichols, a shy Army veteran (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) drifting through life as a single (see November 1988), underemployed father, does something that surprises everyone he knows: he leaves his home state of Michigan for the Philippines to marry a mail-order bride, 17-year-old Marife Torres, who lives with her parents in a small apartment above a lumberyard. Torres lives in Cebu City, where Nichols meets her. Her parents are leery of their daughter marrying an older man; in talking with Nichols, they learn that he wants a Filipino bride because he has been told “they stayed at home.” The two are married on November 20, 1990 at a Chinese restaurant in Cebu, and Nichols returns to Decker, Michigan, to begin the legal process necessary to bring Marife back to the US. [New York Times, 5/28/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 74-75] Nichols will later be convicted of conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). His connection to the Philippines will result in shadowy connections with suspected Islamist terrorists in that nation (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994 and November 5, 1994 - Early January 1995).

Matthew Hayhow, the 23-year-old leader of the Ohio chapter of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), is arrested after robbing two banks and ultimately is sentenced to a 25-year prison term. Nine years later, Hayhow will write articles for The Struggle, the tabloid of the COTC’s successor organization. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

A Web graphic opposing the ‘New World Order.’ [Source: Human Symbiose (.org)]In a speech discussing the post-Cold War world, President Bush outlines his vision of a “New World Order.” Bush says: “We stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective—a new world order—can emerge: a new era—freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.” The Southern Poverty Law Center will later write that many people, particularly white supremacists and separatists, take Bush’s phrase “as a slip of the tongue revealing secret plans to create a one-world government.” [Sweet Liberty, 9/11/1990; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001] In 1995, Michigan gun dealer and right-wing activist Frank Kieltyka will describe the “New World Order” to a Buffalo News reporter. According to Kieltyka, the “New World Order” is backed by the US government and led by, among other organizations, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). “We’re moving towards the Communists,” Kieltyka will warn. The belief in this “New World Order” will be emphasized in coming years in the militia movements and by right-wing publications such as The Spotlight, an openly racist, anti-government newsletter. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 157-158]

Timothy McVeigh’s unit at Fort Benning, Georgia. McVeigh is highlighted. [Source: Associated Press]Army Sergeant Timothy McVeigh (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) receives orders to attend Special Forces training classes beginning November 11, 1990. McVeigh’s ambition is to become a Green Beret. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] However, his training is interrupted before it begins, as his unit is called up to go to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Shield, later Desert Storm (see January 16, 1991 and After). McVeigh’s unit will leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, to a staging area in Germany, and then on to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Before he leaves, McVeigh pays a brief visit to his hometown of Pendleton, New York (see 1987-1988), where he worries a close friend, his “surrogate mother” Lynn Drzyzga, by telling her, “I’m coming back [from Kuwait] in a body bag.” She will later recall that watching McVeigh walk away “was just like my own son was leaving at that moment.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 32-33]

Timothy McVeigh during the time he served in the Army. [Source: Viceland (.com)]Sergeant Timothy McVeigh (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) gives three months of military service in the Persian Gulf War as a gunner on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle before returning home; during his time there, he paints the name “Bad Company” on the side of the vehicle. “He was a good soldier,” Sergeant James Ives, who serves with McVeigh, will later recall. “If he was given a mission and a target, it’s gone.” [New York Times, 4/23/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 34; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001] McVeigh earns a Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal while overseas, along with a number of citations and ribbons. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 25-26] Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement, the commander of McVeigh’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Kuwait, later recalls: “He was against the National Command Authority’s decision to go to war. McVeigh did not think the United States had any business or interest in Kuwait, but… he knew it was his duty to go where he was told, and he went.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 110]Experiences in Kuwait, Iraq - Fellow soldier Todd Regier later recalls that McVeigh was “definitely excited about going to Desert Storm. He was a perfect gunner. He was the best gunner we had.” McVeigh is part of a Bradley crew which spends its first few weeks sitting idly in the Saudi Arabian desert while American aircraft attack Iraqi defenses (see January 16, 1991 and After). Sergeant Anthony Thigpen later recalls that while the other soldiers play cards, write letters, and chat to relieve their boredom, McVeigh spends his time cleaning his weapons. The 2nd Battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment, McVeigh’s unit, is one of those that makes the initial drive into Kuwait when the invasion begins (see February 23, 1991 and After). McVeigh’s unit sees less intense action than some, and fellow soldier Roger L. Barnett will later recall that McVeigh shows little interest in shooting unarmed and defenseless Iraqis. At one point, McVeigh shoots an Iraqi soldier from some 2,000 yards away in the head, using the Bradley’s 25mm cannon. McVeigh wins a medal for the shot. He later recalls of the shooting: “His head just disappeared.… I saw everything above the shoulders disappear, like in a red mist.” He becomes angry when he learns that many Iraqis do not want to fight, and are equipped with inferior gear. According to an aunt, McVeigh is deeply disturbed about the fighting in Iraq. “When he came back, he seemed broken,” she later tells a reporter. “When we talked about it, he said it was terrible there. He was on the front line and had seen death and caused death. After the first [killing], it got easy.” While posted in Kuwait, McVeigh writes to a friend in the US that he hates Saddam Hussein: “Chickensh_t b_stard. Because of him, I killed a man who didn’t want to fight us, but was forced to.” However, a fellow soldier, Kerry Kling, later recalls McVeigh being proud of the shot that killed the Iraqi. Sergeant Royal L. Witcher, McVeigh’s assistant gunner on the Bradley, later recalls the soldiers’ dismay at their experiences with Iraqi soldiers. “I think it kind of shocked most of us,” he will say. “We had thought that they were our enemies, and then for us to encounter something like that with a mass of people giving up.” After the offensive, McVeigh’s unit is assigned to guard duty, and spends the remainder of the war relatively inactive. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 113; Serrano, 1998, pp. 36-38; CNN, 12/17/2007] McVeigh will later recall being angry at the situation in Kuwait. In a letter to a reporter, he will write: “We were falsely hyped up [about the enemy]. And we get there and find out that they are normal like you and me. They hype you up to take those people out. They told us we were to defend Kuwait where the people had been raped and slaughtered (see October 10, 1990). War woke me up. War will open your eyes.” Of the Iraqi soldiers, he will write, “I felt the army brainwashed us to hate them.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 36-37]Withdraws from Special Forces Training - After returning to the US, McVeigh begins 21 days of Special Services training at Camp McCall, west of Fort Bragg, North Carolina (see October 1990). He is thrilled to be joining Special Forces, and is confident that he will pass the grueling physical and psychological assessments. However, he leaves the training at Camp McCall during the second day. He later tells people he withdraws because of a leg injury. Some military officials will say that preliminary psychological screening shows him to be unfit for Special Forces, leading some reporters to conclude that McVeigh was kicked out of training, but those conclusions are inaccurate: McVeigh’s screenings are not processed until long after he leaves, and his withdrawal is entirely voluntary. McVeigh later says that he begins training with a friend, Specialist Mitchell Whitmire (one source spells his name “Whitmyers,” apparently in error), days after returning from overseas duty. He will say that he is in poor physical condition, mentally and physically exhausted from his time in combat, and unready for the physical demands of Green Beret training. He does not accept an offer extended to him and other combat veterans to take some time off and try again at a later date. Instead, after two arduous days of physical workouts, McVeigh and Whitmire leave the training program before McVeigh’s assessments can be graded and reviewed. On his Statement of Voluntary Withdrawal, McVeigh writes, “I am not physically ready, and the rucksack march hurt more than it should.” Ives will recall McVeigh as being “extremely disappointed.” Thigpen later recalls: “Everybody knew he was highly upset. We never knew the reason why he didn’t make it. We figured, you don’t make it, you don’t make it. But he was definitely angry. He was upset, very upset.” Fellow soldier James Fox later tells a reporter that McVeigh’s withdrawal from Special Forces training was a defining moment for him, saying, “Whether he withdrew or was kicked out, it still was a failure and very easily he could externalize blame.” McVeigh then takes a 30-day leave to visit his sister Jennifer in Florida, and to spend some time in upstate New York, where he grew up (see 1987-1988). [New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 5/4/1995; New York Times, 7/5/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 115-119; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 41-42] Author Brandon M. Stickney later writes, “It was revealed in confidence to [me] that answers McVeigh gave on the psychological tests were apparently a bit off-center, not the answers of a man capable of long-term assignments with the exclusive and tight Special Forces.” Stickney will also write that McVeigh may be suffering from “Gulf War Syndrome,” a mysterious series of maladies apparently caused by exposure to toxic chemicals. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 117-118] In 1993, McVeigh will write a letter to his sister Jennifer giving a very different explanation of his reason for withdrawing from Special Forces tryouts (see October 20, 1993). After he returns from active duty, he begins displaying increasingly eccentric behavior (see March 1991 and After). McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Sergeant Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Army gunner, returns from serving three months in Operation Desert Storm (see January - March 1991 and After). Disillusioned and discouraged by his experiences and his failure to succeed in Special Forces training, McVeigh returns to Fort Riley, Kansas, and begins displaying increasingly odd behavior, always carrying a weapon and talking incessantly about the constitutional right to bear arms. His friend and fellow soldier Bruce Williams later recalls that McVeigh is no longer the “Iron Mike” that he had known during training at Fort Benning. “I’d hang out and go to the parties and drink Budweiser,” Williams will recall. “Tim just stayed in his room playing Nintendo.” McVeigh rents a house off post with two fellow soldiers, Corporal John Edward Kelso and Sergeant Rick Cerney, in Herington, Kansas, some 40 miles from Fort Riley. Kelso later recalls he and Cerney trying to “josh with him” and get him to relax. “It was so easy to put him over the edge,” Kelso will recall. “He was so gullible, so vulnerable. He was so unbalanced about being tough. He was just kind of a nerd.” Sergeant Royal L. Witcher, McVeigh’s assistant gunner during active duty in Kuwait and Iraq, later recalls that McVeigh is uncomfortable sharing the house with the two, and persuades Witcher to let him move in with him instead. McVeigh moves into Witcher’s Herington home and immediately claims the larger of the two bedrooms, blocking the window with a camouflage poncho. Witcher later says he knew better than to enter McVeigh’s room. McVeigh keeps at least 10 guns in the house, Witcher will recall, saying: “They weren’t exposed, they were hidden. He had a couple in the kitchen, a couple in the living room under the couch. I think there was one in the bathroom, behind the towels. As you go up the steps there was a little ledge and he kept one in there, a .38 revolver.” McVeigh also keeps two guns in his car and a shotgun at the home of a sergeant who also lives off post. Witcher never asks why McVeigh keeps so many guns. “I don’t know if he was paranoid or what,” Witcher will recall. “Or maybe he had some friends that were after him. I don’t know.” On occasion, McVeigh sells guns to fellow soldiers. He cleans all of his weapons twice a week, and takes them to a lake to shoot every weekend. Witcher never recalls McVeigh having any dates. On a few occasions, the two have conversations. “He was a very racist person,” Witcher will recall. “He had very strong views against, like, political things, like that.” Witcher will say he does not share McVeigh’s racist views: “He pretty much knew my views and he didn’t talk too much about it around me.” McVeigh constantly complains about government intrusiveness, Witcher will recall, taking umbrage with items he reads in the newspaper on a daily basis. Witcher will remember McVeigh dropping out of the National Rifle Association (NRA) when that organization seems to be softening its stance on the banning of assault rifles. He begins spending more and more time poring over gun magazines, and spends more and more time in the pawnshops and gun dealerships in nearby Junction City. [New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 5/4/1995; New York Times, 7/5/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 42; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001]Becomes Conspiracy-Minded, Involved with Extremist Groups - Ives will recall that after his failed attempt to join Special Forces, McVeigh becomes involved with extreme right-wing political groups off-post. Ives cannot identify the groups, but, he will say, “cults is what I call them.” Witcher will recall nothing of any such involvement. [New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 5/4/1995] Ives may be referring to a group of soldiers who begin meeting off-base to take action against gun control and government interference in their lives, a group McVeigh meets with at least once. His unit member Robin Littleton later recalls McVeigh becoming increasingly “bitter” and conspiracy-minded, reading books about the Kennedy assassination and becoming “convinced that the government was behind it all. He also started reading a lot of fiction, all of it to do with big business and the military planning on overthrowing the government. He started to rant on about the private armies that were springing up inside the federal government, and how the CIA and FBI were out of control.” At least one local girl, Catina Lawson, shows some interest in McVeigh, but his anti-Semitic rants and his professed admiration for Adolf Hitler quickly terminate her interest. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 120, 125-127] Warnement later recalls corresponding with McVeigh in 1992 and 1993, after Warnement is transferred to Germany. “He sent me a lot of newsletters and stuff from those groups he was involved in,” Warnement will recall. He will say that because the literature is so extremist, he throws it away rather than being caught with it. “There were newsletters from [militia leader] Bo Gritz’s group, some other odd newsletters, some from the Patriots; then he sent that videotape ‘The Big Lie’ about Waco. He seemed quite a bit different after the war than he’d been before.” The Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993) infuriates McVeigh, Warnement will recall (see April 19, 1993 and After). McVeigh is also angered by the use of Army units for drug-enforcement duties on the US-Mexican border, the deployment of infantry during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and UN command over US forces during fighting in Somalia. “He thought the federal government was getting too much power,” Warnement will recall. “He thought the ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] was out of control. Then, of course, when Waco happened, he really felt the ATF was out of control.… He wasn’t happy about Somalia, that if we could put the United States under basically UN command and send them to Somalia to disarm their citizens, then why couldn’t they come do the same thing in the United States?… It had a kind of logic to it, but it really didn’t take into account the flip side of things. I kind of had the feeling that he might be headed for trouble because he was never the type of person to back down.” [New York Times, 7/5/1995] In February 1992, McVeigh sends Warnement a copy of The Turner Diaries, a racially inflammatory novel about a white supremacist genocide in the US (see 1978). He also includes a news article concerning a black militant politician. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]Accepts Early Discharge - Like many soldiers, McVeigh is encouraged to leave as part of the military’s postwar “drawdown.” McVeigh soon takes an early discharge and leaves the Army entirely (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). Sergeant James Hardesty, who served in Kuwait with McVeigh, later says that many soldiers such as McVeigh and himself felt like “discarded baggage.” [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 42-43] Fellow soldier Roger L. Barnett later recalls: “He wasn’t the same McVeigh. He didn’t go at things the way he normally did. It used to be, a superior commanding soldier would tell him to do something and he’d do it 110 percent. He didn’t have the same drive. He didn’t have his heart in the military anymore.” [New York Times, 7/5/1995]Future Oklahoma City Bomber - McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).

George Loeb, a minister in the virulently racist Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), writes a letter to the editor of the Fort Pierce Tribune. Loeb writes in part: “To you, your readers, and all of chose quoted [in a Tribune article], let me just say this_WAKE UP! There is no need to judge each individual n_gger. We do not have the time.… It is your obvious intention to reinforce the mistaken impressions of the ignorant. This is to the detriment of the besieged white community. It is also why we publish and distribute ‘Racial Loyalty’ [the COTC monthly newsletter]: to offset the deliberate lies and distortions of the jewish [sic] media and to motivate White people to clean up this mess themselves since they cannot count on you, your paper, or your police for any help.” Around the same time, Loeb tells a reporter: “The only thing they [blacks] can do is get in my face, and that’s a mistake.… If my back’s against the wall, I won’t run. I have to do what I have to do.” [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999] Two months later, Loeb will murder an African-American man in a Florida parking lot (see June 6, 1991 and After).

Dean Harvey Hicks, an engineer from Costa Mesa, California, launches a mortar attack on an IRS service center in nearby Fresno. He had earlier attempted twice to bomb a West Los Angeles IRS office, once with a truck-borne fertilizer bomb (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and had attempted two other bomb and mortar attacks on IRS offices in Southern California between 1987 and 1990. None of the attacks caused serious damage. The FBI learns that he is planning to bomb an FBI office in Los Angeles. Investigators believe that Hicks has nursed a grudge against the IRS since 1981, when the agency disallowed an $8,500 charitable deduction for the Universal Life Church and assessed a hefty penalty against him. Hicks will confess to launching the attacks, and says he attacks the IRS offices because an IRS employee laughed at him when he called with a question. After arresting Hicks, FBI investigators find what they will describe as “a virtual bomb factory” in his garage, along with letters in Hicks’s handwriting claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of a group called “Up The IRS Inc.” It is unclear if this group actually exists or is merely a creation of Hicks’s. Hicks’s job gave him access to some of the materials used in the bombing, investigators will conclude, and they will trace the purchase of other explosive components to him. In September 1988, Hicks stole and then exploded a 1971 Toyota Corolla in a parking garage in the basement of a building containing an IRS office in Los Angeles. The owner later received $500 in the mail from an anonymous source. The car was stolen from the parking lot of Hicks’s place of employment, and investigators will tie the Corolla’s theft and bombing to Hicks. The 1990 truck bombing was prevented by firefighters after Hicks fired mortar shells at the truck; had the mortar shells detonated the 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate it contained, it could have done tremendous damage and killed hundreds of people. At his trial, Hicks will claim, “The way I set the timing [of the bombings] was intended to cause the greatest amount of display with minimal injury to anyone around it.” Hicks will receive 20 years in prison. [Los Angeles Times, 7/30/1991; Associated Press, 8/17/1991; Anti-Defamation League, 2011]

Terry Nichols, a shy loner and Army veteran (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) in Michigan, moves to Henderson, Nevada, outside Las Vegas. He tells friends he wants to attempt a career as a real estate agent, a plan that fails to bear fruit. When his Filipino bride Marife joins him (see July - December 1990), she is six months pregnant with a child that is not his. Nichols may be troubled about the circumstances of the child’s conception, but he does not talk about it, and accepts the child, a son they will name Jason Torres Nichols, as his own. In the fall, Nichols takes his wife and son back to his home town of Decker, Michigan. [New York Times, 5/28/1995; New York Times, 12/24/1997] Nichols will later be convicted of conspiracy in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Signs held by a WBC picketer at the funeral of a fallen soldier. [Source: Eagle I Online (.com)]The virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas (see November 27, 1955 and After) begins what it calls its “picketing ministry,” holding controversial protests to raise awareness of the church and gain media attention. The first protest is held at Gage Park, a Topeka park that the WBC claims is a “meeting place” for homosexuals. The protests continue well into 2001. In 2012, the church will claim to have held over 40,000 protests. WBC members attend these protests bearing signs with such slogans as “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates Jews,” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “Thank God for IEDs” [improvised explosive devices], and “Thank God for AIDS.” Protesters often shout vulgar and obscene epithets at mourners. The church protests many local businesses and individuals in Topeka, including picketing one restaurant every day for three years because the owner knowingly hired a lesbian employee. Jerry Berger, the owner of the restaurant, will later say that church leader Fred Phelps promises to “put you out of business” if he does not fire the employee. When Berger refuses, Phelps and the WBC hound him and the restaurant for three years until he sells the restaurant and the employee quits. Phelps and the WBC find the woman in her new job and protest her there, also. The WBC also continues to protest at the restaurant. At least one member, Shirley Phelps-Roper, often brings American flags to protests and allows her children to trample the flags during those protests, engendering even more media attention. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001; Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2012; Anti-Defamation League, 2012] The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) will later write that it believes the group’s overriding purpose is to garner publicity for itself. “Every mention of WBC in the media is considered a victory by the group,” it will observe. [Anti-Defamation League, 2012]

George Loeb. [Source: World Church of the Creator]George Loeb, a minister for the white supremacist Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), is arrested and charged with murdering African-American Gulf War veteran Harold Mansfield Jr. in a Neptune, Florida, parking lot two weeks ago. Confrontation and Murder - Loeb nearly sideswept Mansfield’s car in the parking lot of a local shopping center, and Mansfield honked his horn at Loeb. The two argued before Mansfield drove away. Loeb then drove to a convenience store, where he bought two six-packs of beer, gave the cashier a card reading “White People Awaken. Save the White Race,” and, according to the cashier, angrily shouted racist epithets and statements while in the store. Meanwhile, Mansfield and a friend returned to the parking lot to confront Loeb. The two resumed their argument. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999] According to witnesses, Loeb provoked Mansfield with racial taunts and epithets. [New York Times, 5/19/2006] Mansfield brandished a brick, and Loeb pulled out a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Mansfield attempted to retreat, but Loeb shot him in the chest. Loeb then fired at Mansfield’s friend, who fled to the grocery store to escape Loeb and call for help. By the time the friend returned to the car, Mansfield was almost dead. He died shortly thereafter. Previous Arrests for Racially Motivated Altercations - After Loeb’s arrest, the press learns of a previous arrest in November 1990, when Loeb followed an African-American woman and her daughter, called the woman a racial slur, and threatened to shoot her. In January 1991, Loeb was arrested again for starting a fistfight with an African-American neighbor; he was charged with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest. In April 1991, Loeb wrote a letter to the Fort Pierce Tribune stating his racist views (see April 1991). When they arrest him for Mansfield’s murder, police seize over 1,600 pages of personal correspondence and racist propaganda from Loeb’s apartment, including a document written to a Ku Klux Klan member that reads in part: “The frequent use of the word n_gger should lead to a widespread and violent black uprising that should give whites (and possibly police) the opportunity to kill large numbers of them with impunity. It is our feeling as Creators [COTC members] that shrinking the numbers of blacks worldwide is one of the highest priorities.” Arrest in New York - Loeb and his wife Barbara left their Neptune condominium and fled Florida within hours of the shooting, assisted by fellow COTC member Steve Gabott Thomas. (Thomas is one of four Army soldiers convicted of raping and murdering a Vietnamese woman in 1966, a crime that formed the basis of the 1989 film Casualties of War. He served four years of a life sentence before being released on parole.) On June 6, 1991, the couple is arrested in Poughkeepsie, New York, after George Loeb assaults a grocery store security guard who caught him trying to steal a package of sandwich meat. Officers search their car and find two smoke bombs, a .22-caliber rifle with a scope and extra magazines, a 12-gauge shotgun, and approximately 1,000 rounds of assorted ammunition. Additionally, Barbara Loeb’s purse contains a handgun and ammunition. Convictions - Barbara Loeb is arrested for weapons possession, and later sentenced to a year in prison. George Loeb is charged with murder and extradited to Florida. Loeb will claim that he killed Mansfield in self-defense, and will tell the jury that he contemplated fleeing to Canada because it is a “predominantly white country” where he might expect to be treated more impartially. He will be found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years without parole. Loeb will attempt to kill himself in the hours after his conviction; he will tell police, “I want to die because the whole world is an _sshole.” Thomas will be convicted of being an accessory after the fact to the murder and sentenced to a year’s probation, likely because he helped police in capturing the Loebs. Martyrdom - COTC members will attempt to portray Loeb as a hero and martyr, claiming that he killed Mansfield in self-defense and is a hero of white people everywhere. However, COTC leader Ben Klassen will not publicly endorse the murder, telling a reporter: “I am no more responsible for [the murder] than the pope is responsible for all the Catholic felons in prison.… Not at all.” Klassen will also tell the reporter that Thomas, who aided the Loebs’ flight, will no longer be a COTC member. However, Thomas will continue to be a prominent member of COTC. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Anti-abortion protesters gather on a street corner in Wichita. [Source: Patriotic Thunder (.org)]Anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue (see 1986), under the new leadership of the Reverend Keith Tucci, conducts a seven-week occupation of three women’s clinics in Wichita, Kansas. Some 2,700 activists and protesters are arrested during the course of events. [Associated Press, 7/5/1993; Kushner, 2003, pp. 38-39] The occupation is part of what the organization calls the “Summer of Mercy,” which involves a series of clinic blockades, occupations, and harassment of abortion providers, clinic staff, and patients. The event lasts six weeks, and culminates in a rally that fills Wichita’s Cessna Stadium and features conservative Christian activist Dr. James Dobson. One of the clinics targeted is operated by Dr. George Tiller; Tiller will be shot by an anti-abortion activist in 1993 (see August 19, 1993) and murdered by another in 2009 (see May 31, 2009). [Associated Press, 7/5/1993] Some of the Operation Rescue members arrested face charges for attacking police officers trying to keep order at the clinics. Tucci and two other anti-abortion organization leaders, the Reverends Pat Mahoney and Joe Slovenec, are jailed until they agree to comply with Judge Patrick Kelly’s order not to blockade the clinics. Two other Operation Rescue leaders, Randall Terry and Michael McMonagle, are ordered along with Tucci, Mahoney, and Slovenec to leave Wichita; when they refuse to comply with Kelly’s initial order to stop the blockades after agreeing to it, Kelly observes, “You are learning for the first time, I think, that you can’t trust a damned thing they say.” Mahoney retorts, “Hell will freeze over before I surrender my constitutional rights.” He, Tucci, and Slovenec promise to return to Wichita despite the court orders and again protest at the clinics. [Associated Press, 8/31/1991; Associated Press, 7/5/1993] The Bush administration attempts to derail Kelly’s curbing of the anti-abortion activities; the Justice Department files a “friend of the court” brief challenging Kelly’s jurisdiction in the case. “The position we have taken before the Supreme Court of the United States is that the courts do not have jurisdiction, that it is a matter properly handled in state and local courts,” says Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. [Newport News Daily Press, 8/9/1991]

A Glock 9mm pistol similar to the one carried by Timothy McVeigh, with two ammunition clips. [Source: Slate]Timothy McVeigh, a white supremacist and survivalist (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) who is about to leave the US Army after being denied a position in Special Forces (see January - March 1991 and After), reportedly buys a Glock .45 caliber handgun from a dealer in Ogden, Kansas. McVeigh will later say that the gun is a 9mm weapon, not a .45. In April 1993 he will write a letter to Glock Manufacturing claiming that he carries the weapon as a “law enforcement officer.” [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] On the morning of the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh will be arrested; the Glock, a 9mm, will be found in his possession (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Timothy McVeigh, a nascent white supremacist and survivalist (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) who is in the process of taking “early termination” from the US Army after being denied a position in Special Forces (see January - March 1991 and After), moves back in with his father in Pendleton, New York. Initially, he joins a National Guard unit and tries unsuccessfully to join the US Marshals. He is formally discharged from the Army on December 31, 1991. His final psychological assessment from the Army shows him to be under extreme stress and experiencing a powerful sense of disillusionment with the federal government. In January 1992, he goes to work for Burns International Security Services in Buffalo after leaving the Guard (see June 1992), and quickly rises to the rank of inspector. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810; Serrano, 1998, pp. 48; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001; CNN, 12/17/2007] (A New York Times report later says McVeigh leaves the Army in early 1992. A book about McVeigh, One of Ours, claims that McVeigh returns to Pendleton after leaving the Army around Christmas of 1991.) [New York Times, 5/4/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 44]Depressed, Suicidal, Detached, Enraged - Over time, McVeigh becomes increasingly depressed and reportedly considers suicide; friends and colleagues will describe him as deteriorating both mentally and physically, and, in the words of the New York Times, will describe him as “an increasingly unstable man who wavered between gloomy silences and a hair-trigger temper, who lost so much weight he seemed anorexic, and who could follow simple orders but could not handle pressure or take independent action.” Lynda Haner-Mele, a supervisor for Burns Security in Kenmore, New York, later recalls working with McVeigh at the Niagara Falls Convention Center. She remembers calling him “Timmy” and worrying about his weight loss. “He seemed almost lost, like he hadn’t really grown up yet,” she will say. She is unaware of his Army service, later recalling: “He didn’t really carry himself like he came out of the military. He didn’t stand tall with his shoulders back. He was kind of slumped over.… That guy did not have an expression 99 percent of the time. He was cold. He didn’t want to have to deal with people or pressure. Timmy was a good guard, always there prompt, clean, and neat. His only quirk was that he couldn’t deal with people. If someone didn’t cooperate with him, he would start yelling at them, become verbally aggressive. He could be set off easily. He was quiet, but it didn’t take much.” Increasingly Radicalized - McVeigh becomes increasingly radicalized, growing more disenchanted with the idea of a federal government and distressed about the possibility of a federal crackdown on gun ownership. He talks about the government forcibly confiscating the citizenry’s guns and enslaving citizens. He writes angry letters to newspapers and his congressman on subjects such as his objection to inhumane slaughterhouses and a proposed law prohibiting the possession of “noxious substances,” and warns against an impending dictatorship if action is not soon taken (see February 11, 1992). He urges friends to read a novel, The Turner Diaries (see 1978), which tells the story of a white supremacist revolt against the US government and the extermination of minorities, and gives copies to his friends and relatives. He begins acquiring an arsenal of guns, and sets up a generator and a store of canned food and potable water in his basement so that he would be self-sufficient in case of emergency. He applies to join the Ku Klux Klan, but decides against it because, he believes, the KKK is too focused on race and not enough on gun rights. The Times will later write: “While there was no firm evidence that Mr. McVeigh belonged to any organized right-wing paramilitary or survivalist groups, there was considerable evidence that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs. He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he read their literature, and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked, and traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable support, according to numerous interviews.” In the summer of 1992, McVeigh moves to Michigan to stay with his old Army friend Terry Nichols, telling friends he is leaving to find a “free state” in which to live. McVeigh’s and Nichols’s shared hatred of the federal government continues to grow. [New York Times, 5/4/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Mickolus and Simmons, 6/1997, pp. 810; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CNN, 2001; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; CNN, 12/17/2007] Reportedly, McVeigh tells people that the Army has placed a computer chip in his buttocks to keep him under surveillance. [People, 5/8/1995] McVeigh’s fellow security guard, Carl Edward Lebron Jr., later recalls long conversations with McVeigh that center around “politics, secret societies, some religion and conspiracy theories,” UFOs, and government conspiracies to addict its citizens to illegal drugs. Lebron wonders if McVeigh himself might belong to a secret society of some sort, perhaps a Freemason sect. Lebron will recall McVeigh showing him Ku Klux Klan newsletters and gold coins, some minted in Canada. Lebron becomes worried enough about McVeigh’s apparent instability to tape-record some of their conversations, and keep notes of what McVeigh tells him. What seems to worry Lebron the most is McVeigh’s talk about stealing weapons from Army bases. In August, McVeigh quits his job at Burns, telling coworkers: “I got to get out of this place. It’s all liberals here.” Lebron bids him goodbye, saying, “Stay out of trouble,” to which McVeigh replies: “I can’t stay out of trouble. Trouble will find me.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 48-57] Law professor Douglas O. Linder will later speculate that McVeigh’s radicalization may have been triggered, and was certainly deepened, by the FBI’s raid on the Ruby Ridge compound of white supremacist Randy Weaver (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992). [Douglas O. Linder, 2006] McVeigh later tells his lawyers that during this time, he became increasingly stressed because of what he will call his “heightened sense of awareness of what the news was really saying.” He becomes increasingly obsessed with the news, raging at politicians for trying to blend politics and the military, and at the government for “strong-arming other countries and telling them what to do.” He becomes increasingly enraged by what he calls the increasing anti-gun sentiment in the US, and the “liberal mindset that all things in the world could be solved by discussion.” He learned in the military that most problems can best be solved by aggression, he will say, citing physical fights he had with fellow soldiers and angry confrontations with fellow security workers. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]Movements Cloudy - McVeigh’s movements are somewhat cloudy during this period. A New York Times report will say that McVeigh and Nichols may have lived together in Marion, Kansas, not Michigan, and McVeigh may have moved to Kingman, Arizona, during this time or sometime later. [New York Times, 4/23/1995]Future Oklahoma City Bomber - McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City, with Nichols’s aid (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Haner-Mele will have difficulty believing McVeigh orchestrated the bombing. “Timmy just wasn’t the type of person who could initiate action,” she will say. “He was very good if you said, ‘Tim, watch this door—don’t let anyone through.’ The Tim I knew couldn’t have masterminded something like this and carried it out himself. It would have had to have been someone who said: ‘Tim, this is what you do. You drive the truck.’” [New York Times, 5/4/1995] McVeigh’s cousin Kyle Kraus, who received a copy of The Turner Diaries from McVeigh, puts the book away until after the bombing, when he will reread some of it. Horrified, he will contact the FBI; the copy will become an exhibit in McVeigh’s criminal trial (see August 10, 1995). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 51]

David Barbarash. [Source: Anti-Defamation League]David Barbarash, an animal rights activist with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976 and 1979-1993), is jailed for four months for releasing cats from a University of Alberta laboratory, where they were undergoing medical experiments and vivisections. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Lawyer and ordained minister Fred Phelps, the leader of the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Topeka, Kansas (see November 27, 1955 and After), runs for the US Senate. Though he calls his opponent a “bull dike” (a missppelled accusation that his opponent is a lesbian), Phelps wins almost 31 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001] Phelps ran for governor of Kansas in 1990, and won less than seven percent of the Democratic primary vote (see 1990).

Statistics from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms cite 149 acts of arson against abortion providers, and 47 abortion clinic-related bombings between 1992 and 1998. [Ms. Magazine, 12/2002]

The “Aryan Republican Army” (ARA) commits at least 22 bank robberies across America’s Midwest. The ARA is modeled after the violent white supremacist organization The Order (see Late September 1983), which had funded itself primarily through robbing armored trucks. For a time, the group’s headquarters is in Elohim City, Oklahoma (see 1973 and After). The ARA’s leaders claim to be dedicated to the “overthrow of the US government, the extermination of American Jews, and the establishment of an Aryan Republic” on the North American continent. Members are required to read the infamous Turner Diaries (see 1978), a novel depicting the overthrow of the US government by white separatists and the genocide of minorities. The robberies in all secure between $250,000 and $500,000 for the group. Robbery Spree - During the height of their robbery spree, ARA members target a bank about once a month, hitting banks and financial institutions in Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and Kentucky. Sometimes the robbers dress like construction workers and flee in junk cars bought specifically for the escape. Sometimes they leave fake bombs and smoke grenades to delay pursuit; sometimes they speak in foreign languages to confuse authorities. In a December 1994 heist, one robber wears a Santa Claus suit, shouts “Ho, ho, ho!” to customers, and leaves a bomb tucked in a Santa hat. During a March 1995 robbery, the robbers leave a pipe bomb in an Easter basket. On one occasion the robbers leave a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the ashtray of an abandoned getaway car. Sometimes they wear caps or bandannas bearing the logos of the FBI or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). On another occasion the robbers buy a getaway car, a Ford Fairlane, in the name of a retired FBI agent who had worked white supremacist cases in the Northwest; on the front seat of this car they leave an article about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). When FBI agent Jim Nelson takes his speculations about the ARA public, group members send letters to several Midwestern newspapers mocking him and calling themselves the “Mid-Western Bank Bandits.” Arrests and Convictions - By late 1995, federal and state authorities will arrest most ARA members; ARA leader Peter Kevin Langan will be convicted on multiple charges of bank robbery, and another ARA leader, Richard Guthrie, will commit suicide in prison after cooperating with authorities. Michael William Brescia and Kevin William McCarthy also cooperate with authorities in return for reduced sentences. Others convicted include Mark William Thomas and Scott Stedeford. Promotional Video Gives Principles - In a two-hour promotional video made in January 1995 and called “The Armed Struggle Underground,” Langan, calling himself “Commander Pedro,” appears in a ski mask alongside others in fatigues brandishing weapons and fistfuls of cash. In the video, Langan says: “Our basic goal is to set up an Aryan republic.… Don’t mistake us for cultists. We, ladies and gentlemen, are your neighbors.” Langan also says the ARA supports “ethnic cleansing” similar to what the Serbians are carrying out in Kosovo. Another ARA member tells viewers that ARA intends to declare war on the American government and promises a “courthouse massacre.” In the video, ARA members state their principles: all racial minorities are subhuman, Jews are “Satan’s spawn,” whites of northern European descent are “chosen people,” and a United Nations-led “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990) threatens freedom in the United States. [Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/4/1997; Anti-Defamation League, 8/9/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003; New American, 11/28/2005]Oklahoma City Bomber a Member - In 2001, the FBI will state that McVeigh was an ARA member. It is possible that money “laundered” by him shortly before the bombing (see November 1994) came from an ARA bank robbery. [Nicole Nichols, 2003]

Ben Klassen, the 74-year-old founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), cancels the ascension to power of his one-time successor as “Pontifex Maximus” (supreme leader) of the church. Klassen announces that Rudy “Butch” Stanko (see February 1990) will no longer lead the COTC. Instead, Klassen names Baltimore pizza delivery man Charles Altvater to lead the church. Altvater is only known to the COTC membership through a single letter to the editor published in COTC’s monthly newsletter “Racial Loyalty.” Klassen soon changes his mind and names a Milwaukee “skinhead,” Mark Wilson, as his successor; Altvater will soon be arrested in Baltimore on multiple charges, including possession of explosive devices and attempted murder of a police officer. Wilson is the Milwaukee chief of COTC and a member of the “Skinhead Army of Milwaukee” (SHAM), also called the “Northern Hammerskins.” He is introduced as Klassen’s successor under the name “Brandon O’Rourke” (COTC members often use false names to avoid identification by law enforcement officials). Wilson actually assumes a leadership position for a few months before Klassen, wary of SHAM’s propensity for reckless violence, fires him and names yet another successor, Richard “Rick” McCarty (see January 1993 and After). Wilson does not go quietly, and tries unsuccessfully to mount a violent “coup” against McCarty during a meeting at a Milwaukee hotel. (The coup effort fails when three of Wilson’s cohorts are arrested on concealed weapons charges in the hotel parking lot.) [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

A young Louis Beam, dressed in his Ku Klux Klan regalia. [Source: Edit International (.com)]In a number of venues, including “The Seditionist” magazine and an Illinois publication called “The War Eagle: A Voice and Forum for Revolutionary Pan-Aryanism,” white supremacist Louis Beam calls for “leaderless resistance,” or cells of fighters who report to no one. Beam writes that the idea originated in the early 1960s as part of preparations for a Communist takeover of the United States; he has adapted it to the idea of resisting what he calls the threat of “federal tyranny” and the federal government’s “ever increasing persecution and oppression.” Beam writes that the usual “pyramidal” scheme of organization, “with the mass at the bottom and the leader at the top,” is “not only useless, but extremely dangerous for the participants when it is utilized in a resistance movement against state tyranny.… In the pyramid type of organization, an infiltrator can destroy anything which is beneath his level of infiltration and often those above him as well. If the traitor has infiltrated at the top, then the entire organization from the top down is compromised and may be traduced at will.” Beam recommends the independent “cell system” of organization, and cites two examples: the Revolutionary War-era “Sons of Liberty” and the more recent use of “cells” by Communist infiltrators in the US. Beam writes that if the cell system is adopted without the top layer of leadership—leaderless “phantom cells”—this can thwart government efforts to infiltrate and monitor the groups. Every cell must have the same fundamental ideology and agenda, Beam writes, and then can be trusted to operate independently, taking actions that further the cause of the larger group without top-down direction. He concludes: “America is quickly moving into a long dark night of police state tyranny, where the rights now accepted by most as being inalienable will disappear. Let the coming night be filled with a thousand points of resistance. Like the fog which forms when conditions are right and disappears when they are not, so must the resistance to tyranny be.” Beam’s idea will be used by many in the so-called “Patriot Movement.” The “Patriot Movement” is later defined by founder John Wallace and by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a loose confederation of anti-government organizations, groups, and individuals who believe that the US government is illegally infringing on citizens’ liberties. The “Patriot Movement” is largely comprised of right-wing, separatist, and white supremacist organizations, groups, and individuals. [The Seditionist, 2/1992; New York Times, 7/5/1995; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; John Wallace, 2007]

National Guardsman Timothy McVeigh (see January - March 1991 and After, November 1991 - Summer 1992, and June 1992) writes a letter (some sources will call it an “editorial”) that is published in the Lockport, New York, Union-Sun & Journal. His letter, published under the title “America Faces Problems,” reads in part: “What is it going to take to open up the eyes of our elected officials? AMERICA IS IN SERIOUS DECLINE. We have no proverbial tea to dump; should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports?… Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that! But it might.” McVeigh continues: “Crime is out of control. Criminals have no fear of punishment. Prisons are overcrowded so they know they will not be imprisoned long.… Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate ‘promises,’ they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up, we suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. The ‘American Dream’ of the middle class has all but disappeared.… Politicians are further eroding the ‘American Dream’ by passing laws which are supposed to be a ‘quick fix,’ when all they are really designed for is to get the official reelected. These laws tend to ‘dilute’ a problem for a while, until the problem comes roaring back in a worsened form. (Much like a strain of bacteria will alter itself to defeat a known medication.)” McVeigh then writes: “Racism on the rise? You had better believe it… ! At a point when the world has seen communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be heading down the same road.… Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government.… Should only the rich be allowed to live long?” Lockport is a small town north of Buffalo, and serves McVeigh’s home town of Pendleton. McVeigh will have a second letter published in March 1992, that one mainly focusing on the joys of hunting and extolling the “clean, merciful shot” of the deer hunter. Both letters are signed “Tim” and have a preprinted address label pasted beneath the signature. McVeigh will be accused of detonating a massive fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma City; the Union-Sun & Journal managing editor, Dan Kane, will inform the FBI of McVeigh’s letters after McVeigh is taken into custody (see April 21, 1995) on suspicion of perpetrating the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), and reprint them. Kane will speculate: “I think the letter was triggered by something that happened in the service. Here’s a man who just got through seeing a lot of blood” in the Persian Gulf war. He was dissatisfied in general with the way the government was operating, and politicians in particular.” Kane will add: “There was one paragraph in particular that made my heart stop a little bit. It was the one that said, ‘shed blood…’ After Oklahoma City, I certainly look at it as a sort of eerie and prophetic statement.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/27/1995; New York Times, 4/27/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 53; CNN, 12/17/2007] McVeigh’s letter is in response to a previous letter he wrote to US Representative John LaFalce (D-NY), the representative of his home district, which received no response. McVeigh’s letter primarily focused on his concerns about the illegality of private citizens possessing “noxious substances” such as CS gas for protection. [Serrano, 1998, pp. 53]

Sergeant Timothy McVeigh, a former Army soldier, white supremacist, and survivalist (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and November 1991 - Summer 1992), is notified that the Army will send him $1,058 as a signing bonus for his serving a second term. Later that month, he is informed that the government wants the bonus back, with interest. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; New York Times, 7/1/1998] Later, McVeigh’s father William McVeigh will tell FBI investigators that the Army called the money an overpayment, not a bonus, and that his son was furious over the incident. Documents later gathered by the FBI show that a form letter from the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service is sent to McVeigh at his Pendleton, New York, home on February 15, 1993, two years after he left the Army. The letter asks for either the full $1,058 or a $50 installment within 30 days. McVeigh replies: “I have received your notice informing me of my debt owed to you, as well as your threat of referring me to the Justice Department (Big Brother).… In all honesty, I cannot even dream of repaying you the $1,000 which you say I owe. In fact, I can barely afford my monthly rent. Assets? The only thing which I own of any value is my car, a 1987 Chevrolet/Geo Spectrum. If you really want the car, go ahead and seize it.… My car is my only way to get to work; to support myself. But I guess that’s all irrelevant to you. Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property, tax dollars which justify your existence and pay your federal salary. Do you get it yet? By doing your evil job, you put me out of work.” [New York Times, 7/1/1998]

Terry Nichols, a white supremacist member of the so-called “Patriot Movement” (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and February 1992), renounces his US citizenship via a “nonresident alien” declaration to the Evergreen, Michigan, Township Clerk. “[T]here is total corruption in the entire political system,” Nichols says; “the entire political system from the local government on up thru and including the President of the United States, George Bush.” He adds: “I no longer am a citizen of the corrupt political corporate state of Michigan and the United States of America.… I follow the common laws, not the Uniform Commercial Codes, Michigan Statutes, etc., that are all colorable laws.… I lawfully, squarely challenge the fraudulent usurping octopus of jurisdiction/authority that does not apply to me. It is therefore now mandatory for… the so-called IRS, for example, to prove its jurisdiction.” He calls himself “a nonresident alien, non-foreigner, stranger to the current state of the forum.” Many will later detect language similar to that used by the Posse Comitatus movement (see 1969). Nichols has already sent his bank a letter revoking his signature on a credit card application, in an attempt to avoid paying $14,000 in credit card debt (another source will say Nichols owes closer to $40,000), writing in part: “I came across some information and in researching it further I have found that your credit, money, and contracts are all based upon fraud, etc., as stated in my revocation document.” The bank wins a lawsuit to compel Nichols to pay his debt; Nichols attempts to pay the debt with a fraudulent “Certified Fractional Reserve Check,” a scheme somewhat similar to the fraudulent checks advocated by the Montana Freemen (see 1993-1994), which the bank refuses to accept. During the court proceedings, Nichols, ordinarily an unusually quiet and shy man, repeatedly defies judicial orders to, among other things, come to the front of the courtroom, and at one point tells the judge, “I’m… a layman, a natural person, a freedom of common-law citizen under threat and duress and to challenge the jurisdiction of this court.” Circuit Judge Donald A. Teeple will later recall: “He was hollering in a loud voice. I informed him that if he didn’t keep quiet, I’d send him to jail. Then he decided to come around the rail” and participate quietly in the hearing. [New York Times, 4/23/1995; New York Times, 5/28/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; New York Times, 12/24/1997; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003] Both Terry Nichols and his brother James (see December 22 or 23, 1988) routinely stamp their paper money with the words “Discharged Without Prejudice,” a phrase indicating they do not accept its validity. The money-stamping is popular among Posse Comitatus members (see 1969) as they claim money not backed by gold lacks credibility. They also refuse to buy license plates for their vehicles or register them. James Nichols will also renounce his citizenship sometime later [Nicole Nichols, 2003; Nicole Nichols, 2003] , telling local courthouse officials that he is “no longer one of your citizens or a resident of your de facto government.” In mid-1992, Nichols will spend several days in jail for refusing to recognize a court’s authority to make him pay child support; after those days in a cell, he will agree to the court’s mandate. [New York Times, 4/24/1995; Serrano, 1998, pp. 109] Nichols will later be convicted for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and December 23, 1997).

“Racial Loyalty,” the monthly newsletter published by the racist Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), reprints an essay by David Lane on “the Christian Right-wing American Patriots, C.R.A.P. (since that is what they do to [sic] the future of all White children).” Lane is a member of the far-right terrorist group The Order (see Late September 1983) and is serving a 40-year racketeering sentence, as well as a 150-year term for civil rights violation in connection with the 1984 murder of radio talk show host Alan Berg (see June 18, 1984 and After). Many far-right organizations who espouse their own versions of Christianity (see 1960s and After), including the Ku Klux Klan, oppose the COTC’s rejection of Christianity. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993]

Former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh (see January - March 1991 and After and November 1991 - Summer 1992) makes what apparently is his first visit to Decker, Michigan, to visit his Army friend Terry Nichols (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990). It is the first of many visits between McVeigh and Nichols. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] McVeigh has quit his job as a security guard in upstate New York (see June 1992), and is beginning a life of long, solitary drives around the country, supporting himself by selling and trading guns and materiel (including ammunition, blast simulators, and even atropine, an antidote to chemical warfare) at gun shows. He tells friends that one reason he has chosen to leave his home of New York State behind is because of its “out of control” welfare and social services programs and high taxation. McVeigh does a brisk business buying and selling anti-government propaganda and manuals teaching the reader to build homemade bombs and survival techniques. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 143-144; Serrano, 1998, pp. 55-57] McVeigh and Nichols share a virulent hatred of the federal government and other right-wing views (see April 2, 1992 and After). They will soon begin a conspiracy that will culminate in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995).

Ben Klassen, the 74-year-old founder and leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and 1982-1983), sells most of his North Carolina compound to William Pierce of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974). Klassen fears that the COTC property will be seized as a result of a lawsuit filed in conjunction with a murder committed by a COTC official (see June 6, 1991 and After). [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

White supremacist Randy Weaver surrenders after an 11-day standoff with federal authorities at his cabin on Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The standoff cost the lives of Weaver’s wife and son, and a US marshal. The incident, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, will “galvanize… many on the radical right.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

White supremacist Timothy McVeigh (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990 and November 1991 - Summer 1992) moves out of his father’s house in Pendleton, New York, and into a nearby apartment. During this time, he may have a brief affair with a married woman. Also, sometime during this period, he obtains a Ku Klux Klan membership card in Harrison, Arkansas, and drives to Michigan, where he meets his friend Terry Nichols’s brother James Nichols (see December 22 or 23, 1988). He begins receiving subscription copies of the white supremacist magazine The Spotlight. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]

Jennifer McVeigh, the sister of future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), illegally mails her brother 700 rounds of military ammunition, suitable for use in a machine gun or assault rifle, when an upstate New York gun shop, Johnson’s Country Store, refuses to do so. The actual time of this incident is unclear, but it is most likely during the time when McVeigh is staying with his friend and future bombing conspirator Terry Nichols in Michigan (see Summer 1992). [New York Times, 8/4/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 150]

Terry Nichols. [Source: Oklahoma City Police Department]White separatist Terry Nichols (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990, December 22 or 23, 1988, April 2, 1992 and After, and October 12, 1993 - January 1994) makes a number of trips to the Phillippines, apparently to meet with al-Qaeda bomber Ramzi Yousef and other radical Islamists. Nichols will later help plan and execute the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Nichols’s wife is a mail-order bride from Cebu City; Nichols spends an extensive amount of time on the island of Mindanao, where many Islamist terror cells operate. This information comes from a Philippine undercover operative, Edwin Angeles, and one of his wives. Angeles is the second in command in the militant group Abu Sayyaf from 1991 to 1995 while secretly working for Philippine intelligence at the same time (see 1991-Early February 1995). After the Oklahoma City bombing, Angeles will claim in a videotaped interrogation that in late 1992 and early 1993 Nichols meets with Yousef and a second would-be American terrorist, John Lepney. In 1994, Nichols meets with Yousef, Lepney, and others. For about a week, Angeles, Yousef, Nichols, and Lepney are joined by Abdurajak Janjalani, the leader of Abu Sayyaf; two members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, both of whom are working with Yousef on the Bojinka plot (see January 6, 1995); and a half-brother of Yousef known only by the alias Ahmad Hassim (this is a probable reference to Yousef’s brother Abd al-Karim Yousef, who is living in the Philippines at this time). Elmina Abdul, Angeles’s third wife, will add additional details about these 1994 meetings in a taped 2002 hospital confession to a Philippines reporter days before her death. She only remembers Nichols as “Terry” or “The Farmer,” and doesn’t remember the name of the other American. She says: “They talked about bombings. They mentioned bombing government buildings in San Francisco, St. Louis, and in Oklahoma. The Americans wanted instructions on how to make and to explode bombs. [Angeles] told me that Janjalani was very interested in paying them much money to explode the buildings. The money was coming from Yousef and the other Arab.” [Gulf News, 4/3/2002; Insight, 4/19/2002; Manila Times, 4/26/2002; Insight, 6/22/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003] (“The other Arab” may be a reference to the Arab Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, because Janjalani’s younger brother later claims Abu Sayyaf was funded in its early years by Yousef and Khalifa.) [CNN, 1/31/2007] Abdul claims Nichols and Lepney are sent to an unnamed place for more instructions on bomb-making to destroy a building in the US. She also says that Angeles and others in Abu Sayyaf believe Yousef works for the Iraqi government. [Insight, 6/22/2002] The Manila Times later reports that “Lepney did indeed reside and do business in Davao City [in the Southern Philippines] during 1990 to 1996.” One bar owner recalls that when Lepney got drunk he liked to brag about his adventures with local rebel groups. [Manila Times, 4/26/2002] In 2003, Nicole Nichols (no relation to Terry Nichols), the director of the watchdog organization Citizens against Hate, will explain why an American white supremacist would make common cause with Islamist terrorists. Two unifying factors exist, she writes: an overarching hatred of Jews and Israel, and a similarly deep-seated hatred of the US government. [Nicole Nichols, 2003] After Nichols takes part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), Wali Khan Amin Shah will attempt to take the credit for plotting the bombing for himself and Yousef, a claim federal authorities will not accept (see April 19, 1995 and 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After).

An image of a fraudulent ‘Freeman check’ signed by LeRoy Schweitzer. [Source: Anti-Defamation League]During this time period, over a dozen Montana anti-government tax resisters—the kernel of what will become the “Montana Freemen” movement (see 1983-1995)—establish themselves, creating what they term “common law courts” in Garfield and Musselshell Counties, and mounting a massive bank fraud scheme. [Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]Beliefs - According to a Washington Post article, the Freemen espouse a number of beliefs that directly contradict federal, state, and local laws. These are: All forms of organized government are illegitimate and have no right to perform duties routinely assigned to governments, from collecting taxes to requiring automobile licenses. Thusly, the Freemen can perform a multitude of actions, such as defying foreclosures, issuing arrest warrants, and even putting government officials on “trial.” They can also act as their own central banks and defraud the government, financial institutions, and area merchants. Racist 'Christian Identity' Ideology - According to the Montana Human Rights Network and local citizens, most of the Freemen espouse some form of “Christian Identity” religious ideology, which claims that whites are inherently superior to other “inferior” races (see 1960s and After); they also hold radical anti-government views. [Washington Post, 4/1996; Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] The Anti-Defamation League traces the roots of the Freemen ideology to the the Posse Comitatus movement (see 1969). [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] They call themselves “Freemen” because, in their view, white Christian males have special “Freemen” citizenship status, while non-whites, non-Christians, and women have second class status or worse. Freemen are above government prosecution and taxation. As US currency has no intrinsic value, any loans taken by Freemen need not be repaid. The US government is run by Jews and therefore has no legitimacy. “Common law” is the rule of the land. [New York Times, 6/15/1996] The Reverend Jerry Walters of Roundup, Montana, will later characterize the Freemen’s beliefs as a “bizarre distortion of the Christianity taught in most churches on Sundays.” (Rodney Skurdal will file a $100 billion lien against Walters after Walters refuses to alter his sermons to reflect Skurdal’s Christian Identity beliefs.) The Post will observe: “American history is littered with examples of how hard economic times produce hard-edged political splinter groups, but the Freemen of Montana are a particularly virulent strain. Their philosophy, a hodgepodge drawn from the Old Testament, the Magna Carta, the anti-tax Posse Comitatus of the 1980s, and a highly selective reading of the Constitution, is laced with racism and talk of a Jewish conspiracy, and puts them at the extreme of the Christian patriot movement.” Steven Gardner of the Coalition for Human Dignity will say: “The Freemen have, in effect, appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner. They are trying to form their own shadow government for a white Christian republic.” [Washington Post, 4/1996; Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006] “What’s driving them is their biblical and theological agenda,” Walters will say. “Their anti-government conspiracy theories, their anti-tax stance—they’re looking at these things through the lens of Christian Identity.” [Washington Post, 4/9/1996]Fraudulent Liens - LeRoy Schweitzer and the others concoct a scheme to generate money by filing phony liens against various Montana property owners, or the Montana or US government. The liens have no value; however, once they are created, it takes time for bank computers to recognize them as invalid. During that “window” of time, the liens can be used to generate money transfers from unsuspecting banks. The Freemen file the liens and deposit fake money orders at other banks to be drawn upon the bank listing the lien. The money orders are usually signed by Schweitzer, though Skurdal, Daniel Petersen, and William Stanton (see October 17, 1994) also sign them on occasion. The money orders look quite official, though sometimes they deliberately spell the words “United States” with a lowercase “u.” The Freemen also issue bogus checks labeled “Certified Bankers Check—Controller Warrant,” instead of a bank name, along with account and lien numbers. Many checks are drawn against a non-existent account in a Butte, Montana, branch of the Norwest Bank. The checks state that they are also redeemable at the Office of the US Postmaster. The scheme is, on the whole, quite profitable. The Freemen also sell the money orders, advertising them to their fellow citizens as a quick means of getting out of debt. One distributor explains on a Web site: “LeRoy Schweitzer does have their [sic] own monetary system. When you attend their course on location, they will issue you CHECKS times two (biblical) to pay off all IRS debts and all loans to banks for no charge. They are having success in this area, but it is hard fight [sic].” One Omaha, Nebraska, county treasurer will later explain, “People see these and, if you’re a very unsuspecting person, they really do look authentic.” [Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996] Schweitzer, Skurdal, and Petersen are influenced by Roy Schwasinger, described by federal authorities as a right-wing con artist and head of the Colorado extremist group “We the People.” Schwasinger originated the financial schemes that the Freemen run. [New York Times, 6/15/1996]Appointing Themselves as Legal Officials - The Freemen appoint themselves “justices,” issue “arrest warrants,” and flood local courts and counties with what the Billings Gazette will term “bogus documents.” One of the documents, written by the three Freemen leaders, Skurdal, Schweitzer, and Petersen, is interpreted by local law enforcement officials as a threat. It states: “We the Honorable justices, will not hesitate to use our Lawful force by whatever means necessary to fully support, protect, guarantee, and defend our (common) Law… and… Right of self governing as a free sovereign and independent state.” District Court Judge Peter Rapkoch calls the documents “a bucket of snakes.” In July 1994, one of the Freemen, Skurdal, is prohibited by court order from filing or recording any “frivolous” document with any Montana county clerk of court, clerk and recorder, or the secretary of state (see 1994); Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean A. Turnage calls Skurdal’s filings “not only nonsensical but meritless, frivolous, vexatious, and wasteful of the limited time and resources of this court, of the clerk of this court, and of the various public officials and counsel that are forced to deal with and respond to Mr. Skurdal’s abuse.” Garfield County prosecutor Nick Murnion files misdemeanor charges of impersonating public officials against 13 residents and a felony charge of solicitation of kidnapping against Ralph Clark for a $1 million bounty posted around the county for court officers, the sheriff, and Murnion. Garfield County Sheriff Charles Phipps organizes a posse of about 90 local residents to come to the aid of his outmanned, outgunned three-person department (see January 1994). Murnion eventually files felony criminal syndicalism charges against Freemen members. US Attorney Sherry Matteucci works with local and state officials to share information on anti-government activities. “I think their purpose is to intimidate people and to cause chaos in governmental operations,” she says. [Washington Post, 4/9/1996; Chicago Tribune, 4/19/1996; Mark Pitcavage, 5/6/1996; Billings Gazette, 3/25/2006]

Members of the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) of Topeka, Kansas, are charged with eight counts of criminal defamation and other charges by Shawnee County District Attorney Joan Hamilton, charges stemming from a number of what Hamilton says are abuses and crimes committed during protests held by WBC members (see June 1991 and After). WBC leader Fred Phelps, himself a lawyer (see 1985-1989), responds by filing three lawsuits against Hamilton alleging wrongful prosecution. A court invalidates the state defamation statute, blocks further prosecution of the WBC members in the cases, and awards the church $43,000 in legal fees. Years later, an appeals court will reinstate the defamation statute, but the statute of limitations will preclude most of the charges from being refiled. All of Phelps’s lawsuits against Hamilton will eventually be thrown out of court. A second set of defamation charges filed by Hamilton in 1996 will be dropped for technical reasons. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001] The church takes revenge against Hamilton in a more personal way, somehow securing a copy of a private email from her to her husband discussing both of their extramarital affairs and making the email public. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 4/2001]

Richard “Rick” McCarty, the new leader of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and Early 1992 - January 1993), moves the COTC headquarters to Niceville, Florida. McCarty is a professional telemarketer with almost no visibility within the COTC or the larger white supremacist movement. He has a criminal record for running a telemarketing scam in Birmingham, Alabama. He begins his tenure by touting a March 1993 appearance on a television talk show hosted by Sally Jessy Raphael, along with three fellow white supremacists and a small group of black separatists; the two sides engage in angry rhetoric, but little else. In August 1993, McCarty tells a local reporter: “People are finally waking up to the fact that the white man is going to have no country of his own. We don’t have nothing against anybody. We just want to repatriate the blacks and Jews back to their countries of origin.” Reporting McCarty’s words, the Palm Beach Post also states that the COTC has no temple or compound in Niceville, “but it does have a warehouse that holds $500,000 in white supremacist pamphlets, newspapers, and books. They are distributed in all 50 states, and 37 foreign countries, McCarty said.” [Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

White separatist Timothy McVeigh (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990), already mulling over plans to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), quits his job with an upstate New York security company (see November 1991 - Summer 1992), sells all of his belongings except what will fit into his car, and begins traveling around the US attending gun shows and militia events. Not all militia movements are characterized by the racist ideology that helps impel McVeigh, but many are, and many white hate groups are making common cause with militias. McVeigh ekes out enough money selling knives, fatigues, and copies of The Turner Diaries (see 1978) to continue his travels, and meets a number of like-minded people. One gun collector who knows McVeigh from the circuit will later tell investigators: “He carried that book all the time. He sold it at the shows. He’d have a few copies in the cargo pocket of his cammies. They were supposed to be $10, but he’d sell them for $5. It was like he was looking for converts.… He could make 10 friends at a show, just by his manner and demeanor. He’s polite, he doesn’t interrupt.” The gun collector, who refuses to give his name to a reporter, also recalls McVeigh living mostly in his car and carrying a “big pistol” with him at all times. An undercover detective will later recall McVeigh showing people at one 1993 gun show in Phoenix how to convert a flare gun into a rocket launcher, and giving out documents with the name and address of the FBI sniper who had shot the wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992). Psychology professor Gerald Post will later say, “Gun shows have become town hall meetings for racists and antigovernment radicals.” At McVeigh’s trial, prosecutors will say that McVeigh used the gun shows to “fence stolen weapons, make contacts to buy bomb materials, and hone his terrorist skills.” During his travels, McVeigh writes to his sister Jennifer, saying that the government is planning to disarm gun owners and incarcerate them in concentration camps. [New York Times, 7/5/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] Author Brandon M. Stickney will later write: “Today, this part of McVeigh’s life would be difficult even for Tim to document, but it was during this odyssey of uncertainty that he became seriously involved in a dangerous world. Tim was now driven by a desire for ‘citizen action,’ or a movement by the people to alter the liberal thinking of politicians and officials in power.… [I]t is believed that during those lost days, he was frequently exposed to the growing ‘paramilitary’ underworld of Michigan and other states. Groups whose members were upset with taxes, political corruption, and incidents like Ruby Ridge spoke of organizing ‘militias.’” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 150]Meets Fellow Anti-Government Figures at Gun Shows - Along the way, McVeigh meets Andreas Strassmeir, the head of security for the far-right white supremacist community at Elohim City, Oklahoma (see 1973 and After). He also meets gun dealer Roger Moore at a gun show; McVeigh’s partner Terry Nichols will later rob Moore (see November 5, 1994) as part of McVeigh and Nichols’s bomb plot. [New York Times, 7/5/1995; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Nicole Nichols, 2003] Moore is an outspoken man who loudly boasts about his love of country and his hatred for the federal government. He frequently says he would be more than willing to take part in a violent assault against federal law enforcement officials, but, he says, his girlfriend, Karen Anderson, will not let him get involved in such activities. He will later tell a reporter: “I don’t give a sh_t. I’ll put on my flak vest, take a bunch of godd_mn guns in my van, and if I get in a firefight, so be it. I wanna run around and dig up a lot of stuff, but she will not let me go anywhere.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 59]Admires Davidian Attack on Federal Law Enforcement Officials - McVeigh has recently developed a crippling habit of gambling on football games, and has maxed out several credit cards, severely damaging his financial status, though by the end of 1992 he had paid off all but one $10,000 debt. According to his later recollections, he is depressed and frustrated by his inability to find someone to love. He spends some time in Florida, living with his sister and working for her husband as an electrician. He meets Moore while in Florida, and shares a table with him at one gun show. He finds Miami too loud and the people offensive, so he leaves shortly after his arrival. It is at this time that he first learns of the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993), and while watching news coverage of the event, tells his sister that the Davidians “must be doing something right, they are killing Feds.” [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996]

Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a Rhode Island doctor and abortion provider, will later discuss the harassment he and his family suffer at the hands of anti-abortion activists during this time. Rodriguez will say that the harassment escalates to a terrifying level after the murder of Dr. David Gunn by an anti-abortion activist (see March 10, 1993). “[I]n the beginning, the harassment consisted of just nasty letters and graphic pictures of dismembered fetuses,” he will say. “Then I began receiving strange packages with dolls inside, as well as subscriptions to gun magazines.… Then the ‘Wanted’ posters with my picture on them began to appear (see 1995 and After).… Then the doors and locks to our clinic were glued several times (see Early 1980s), and protesters blockaded the clinic three times (see 1985).… Just after Dr. Gunn’s death… I realized that my car was steering poorly. I checked my tires and found 45 nails embedded in them.… That evening, my wife painfully discovered with her foot that our driveway had been booby-trapped with roofing nails cleverly buried beneath the snow.… My home, my haven of safety—violated.” [Providence Journal, 11/17/2001; Sarah Jones, 10/20/2010] In 2000, Rodriguez will write an essay about a stint in an unnamed South American country, where he will perform illegal abortions for indigent tribespeople and citizens. [Carole Joffe, 2000; Metro Catholic, 11/10/2010]

Future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) goes to the site of the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993 and April 19, 1993), to see if the gun ownership rights of the Davidians are being curtailed (see January 23, 1993 - Early 1994). Federal agents block his passage to the compound, but McVeigh stays for a few days sellling bumper stickers, pamphlets, and literature; among his offerings are titles such as “Make the Streets Safe for a Government Takeover,” “Politicians Love Gun Control” (featuring a Nazi swastika and a Communist hammer and scythe), “Fear the Government that Fears Your Gun,” and “A Man with a Gun is a Citizen, A Man without a Gun is a Subject.” McVeigh is particularly horrified by the FBI’s use of Bradley fighting vehicles, the tanks he manned during Desert Storm (see January - March 1991 and After), in the siege. He tells a student reporter: “The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.” The normally self-effacing and reticent McVeigh even climbs up onto the hood of his car to be seen and heard better. “You give them an inch and they take a mile,” he says of the federal government. “I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.” McVeigh leaves Waco after a few days and goes to Kingman, Arizona, to visit an Army buddy, Michael Fortier (see May-September 1993); he later goes to Arkansas to meet with a gun-dealing friend, Roger Moore, who calls himself “Bob Miller” at the gun shows they frequent (see January 23, 1993 - Early 1994); though he wants to build ammunition with Moore, McVeigh does not stay long, and later recalls Moore as being a dictator and a “pr_ck.” During his time in Waco, McVeigh becomes known to federal agents, in part because of an interview with a reporter from Southern Methodist University’s school newspaper, the Daily Campus. The published interview, printed on March 30, includes a photograph of McVeigh. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 67-70; Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; Nicole Nichols, 2003; Douglas O. Linder, 2006] He is also captured on film by a crew from the Texas television station KTVT, a CBS affiliate, sitting on the hood of his car just outside the compound. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 155] Later he will tell friends at a Pennsylvania gun show that he crawled up to the perimeter fence erected by the FBI around the Davidian compound “without being seen by any of the agents,” and will warn one gun dealer, George (or Greg) Pfaff, that the Davidian standoff “could be the start of the government coming house-to-house to retrieve the weapons from the citizens.” [Serrano, 1998, pp. 71] The college reporter, Michelle Rauch, will later testify in McVeigh’s criminal trial. She will recall meeting McVeigh on a hill outside the Davidian compound, where protesters and observers are gathered. She will recall that the hilltop was “a few miles” from the compound, making it difficult for the people gathered there to see any of the activities around the compound. McVeigh tells Rauch that the local sheriff should have just gone down with a warrant and arrested Davidian leader David Koresh. Rauch will recall McVeigh as being calm, and finds his statements quite helpful to her understanding of the protesters’ objections to the FBI standoff. Her article quotes McVeigh as saying, “It seems like the ATF [referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, sometimes abbreviated BATF] just wants a chance to play with their toys, paid for by government money”; “The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people”; “You give them an inch and they take a mile”; “I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government”; and “The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.” McVeigh, according to the article, considers the BATF mere “pawns” of the federal government, and blames the government for the standoff, saying it violated the Constitution in surrounding the Davidian compound. The standoff, he says, is just the first step in a comprehensive government assault on the citizenry and Americans should be watchful for further actions. [Douglas O. Linder, 2006]

Eleanor Smeal, the president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF), holds a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to highlight the need for more volunteers to protect women’s clinics. At the conference, Texas clinic owner Marilyn Chrisman Eldridge describes the extensive damage wrought after anti-abortion activists set her Corpus Christi clinic on fire; the fire destroyed not only her clinic but seven neighboring businesses. She concludes by telling the gathered reporters: “I cannot close without telling you that whenever I turn the key in the ignition of my car, I worry that a bomb might go off. The hatred of the antis [anti-abortion protesters] is such that I fear I will be murdered. That is how bad it is getting.” Patricia Baird-Windle, owner of the Aware Woman Centers for Choice in central Florida, describes how activists trained by Operation IMPACT (see June 6, 1993) have verbally and physically harassed her staffers and her patients. She concludes: “You must not think that these protesters are all peaceful, religious people are misguided and rude, perhaps, but harmless. The hardcore group arrayed against us is paid. Domestic terrorism is their job. They are extortionists pure and simple.” Baird-Windle will later describe the reporters as largely “disengaged” and uninterested in exploring “the prophesy of impending violence that we had handed to them.” [Baird-Windle and Bader, 2001, pp. xiv-xviii] Days later, Florida abortion provider Dr. David Gunn will be murdered (see March 10, 1993).

A prison photo of Michael Griffin. [Source: Bonnie's Life of Crime (.com)]Dr. David Gunn, a women’s doctor and abortion provider in Pensacola, Florida, is shot to death by anti-abortion advocate Michael Griffin, while members of the anti-abortion organization Rescue America protest outside his clinic. The protesters scream, chant, and wave signs declaring, “David Gunn Kills Babies.” Griffin steps forward from a group of protesters, yells, “Don’t kill any more babies!” and fires three shots into Gunn’s back as he is exiting his car. Gunn dies during surgery at a nearby hospital. Griffin informs police that he shot Gunn with a .38 revolver he is carrying, and surrenders to police officers without incident. Steve Powell, an employee at the office park which houses the clinic, later tells reporters that the Rescue America protesters seemed “just happy” after the shooting. Gunn had just opened the clinic a month before, and commuted to work from his home in Eufaula, Alabama. Gunn’s is one of two clinics providing abortions in Pensacola; the city also houses three “abortion counseling” facilities, operated by anti-abortion groups whose objective is to convince women not to have abortions. Gunn has received threats for several years, but in recent months the threats have become more dire. Recently, anti-abortion group Operation Rescue (OR—see 1986) featured Gunn in a “Wanted” poster (see 1995 and After) distributed in Montgomery, Alabama; the poster included Gunn’s photo, home phone number, and other identifying information. OR spokeswoman Margeaux Farrar says the organization knows nothing about the posters and did not print them. The Reverend Joseph Foreman, one of the group’s founders, says Gunn’s murder is just the beginning if the government continues to try to “silence” anti-abortion protesters. Foreman tells reporters, “I’ve been saying for years that if the government insists on suppressing normal and time-honored dissent through injunctions, it turns the field over to the rock-throwers, the bombers, and the assassins.” Many of Griffin’s colleagues and fellow protesters will argue that Gunn’s murder was “justifiable.” Many of those advocates are members of a newly formed organization, the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA—see July 1993). [Washington Post, 3/11/1993; Ms. Magazine, 12/2002; Kushner, 2003, pp. 39; CBS News, 4/19/2007] Griffin will be represented by Florida lawyer Joe Scarborough at some court proceedings, though Scarborough will not represent him at his actual trial. Scarborough (R-FL) will go on to represent his Florida district in the US House of Representatives. [New York Times, 10/25/1994]

Protesters from the virulently anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church (WBC—see November 27, 1955 and After) in Tokepa, Kansas, become part of a riot when angry passersby take umbrage at the extreme rhetoric of the protesters. Eight WBC members are hospitalized with a variety of minor injuries. The riot takes place outside the Vintage Restaurant. The WBC dubs the event “The Vintage Massacre” and begins picketing the restaurant every day, as well as places of business where Vintage employees go after leaving the restaurant in an attempt to escape the picketing. The WBC will hold a “memorial service” every March 26 hereafter in honor of the “massacre.” [Global Oneness, 2011]

Several dozen libertarian, right-wing “patriot,” and gun rights activists protest outside the besieged Branch Davidian compound (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993, March 1, 1993, and March 25, 1993). In addition, right-wing extremist Linda Thompson has a cadre of armed “unorganized militia” members involved in the protests. [Moore, 1995] The protests will lead some in the Justice Department to speculate that organizations such as Thompson’s may attempt to effectuate an armed “rescue” of the Davidians (see April 17-18, 1993).

Television news footage of the Branch Davidian conflagration of April 19, 1993. [Source: Anu News (.com)]Many white separatists and right-wing militia members are aghast, appalled, and infuriated by the violent end to the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993). Two of those are future Oklahoma City bombers Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995); when McVeigh watches the flames devour the Davidian compound, he stands in Nichols’s living room and weeps. McVeigh has already visited the compound during the siege (see March 1993); in the following weeks, he revisits the scene, collecting pamphlets from the Davidians, taking photographs, and even taking samples of the charred wood left behind. McVeigh begins wearing, and selling at gun shows, caps that depict the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) logo with bullet holes in them (see August 26 - September 15, 1994). He sells flares that can be used as missiles. Moreover, he and Nichols soon begin practicing with explosives and agitating for violent assaults on government officials with local militia members (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994). McVeigh later tells interviewers: “I didn’t define the rules of engagement in this conflict. The rules, if not written down, are defined by the aggressor. It was brutal, no holds barred. Women and children were killed at Waco and Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992). You put back in [the government’s] faces exactly what they’re giving out.” McVeigh’s favorite magazine, Soldier of Fortune, later publishes articles calling the FBI and BATF “the Gestapo” and accusing the government of funneling illegal drugs into the country through the auspices of the DEA; McVeigh will read these articles, and other more overt anti-government publications that directly accuse the government of plotting to enact “new Wacos” throughout the country, with a new fervor. Another favorite is a videotape, “Waco: The Big Lie,” promoted by militia leader Linda Thompson (see April 3, 1993 and September 19, 1994), who accuses the government of deliberately plotting the deaths of everyone inside the Davidian compound and setting the compound afire by shooting flames at the building through a tank. McVeigh will later claim to have learned the “real truth” about the siege after meeting a former Davidian, Paul Fatta, on the gun show circuit (see Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994). Nichols’s neighbor Phil Morawski will later recall of McVeigh: “He said he witnessed part of the siege at Waco and was very upset about it; the government overstepped its bounds. Waco is kind of like the battle cry for Tim and many others.” McVeigh’s friend Michael Fortier (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990) will later recall discussing the Davidian debacle with McVeigh, saying, “We both concluded that the federal government had intentionally attacked those people and may not have intentionally started the fire, but they were certainly the cause of the fire and potentially murdered those people in Waco.” Fortier’s wife Lori will recall McVeigh’s position differently: according to her recollection, McVeigh believes that “the government murdered those people.” After the bombing, Dennis Mahon, the head of the Oklahoma cell of the White Aryan Resistance, will tell federal officials about McVeigh, whom he claims to have known under an alias: “I met Tim Tuttle, but I didn’t know he was alias Tim McVeigh. I met him at gun shows (see January 23, 1993 - Early 1994). He sold military stuff, knives, gun parts, camouflage uniforms.… And we talked about Waco. And I said: ‘What comes around goes around. If they keep doing this terrorism on our people, terrorism’s going to happen to them…’ He said: ‘Probably. Probably so.‘… Timothy McVeigh is my hero. Wish we had a thousand more like him. He took action.” Mahon will later be identified by one witness as the person driving the Ryder truck for McVeigh on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing (see April 15, 1995), though the identification is in doubt, and Mahon will not be charged for playing a part in the bombing. [Stickney, 1996, pp. 155, 159; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 76-78; Nicole Nichols, 2003; CNN, 12/17/2007] McVeigh will send videotapes about the Davidian tragedy, such as “Waco: The Big Lie,” to his friends, including his former coworker Carl Lebron (see November 1991 - Summer 1992), his former Army comrade Albert Warnement (see January - March 1991 and After), and his neighbors Richard and Lynn Drzyzga (see October 1990). Lebron considers the videotapes “nonsense,” and the Drzyzgas become concerned that McVeigh may actually believe the “nutty” “paranoia” of the information in them. McVeigh will also write a letter to his childhood friend Steve Hodge, breaking off their friendship because Hodge is not sufficiently enraged by the Davidian tragedy (see July 14, 1994). [Serrano, 1998, pp. 78] McVeigh is not the only one preaching active retribution for Waco. James Nichols, Terry’s older brother (see December 22 or 23, 1988), says they are planning to kill law enforcement officials. Paul Izydorek, a family friend, will later tell a CNN reporter: “Evidently, James had told [Izydorek’s son] one or two times about how they were going to kill cops and judges and, you know, really clean house on all the local government. I didn’t take it serious but I guess maybe that’s what the heck they was really talking about, maybe they was a lot more serious, you know, than I realized.” [Stickney, 1996, pp. 156]

Michael Fortier. [Source: Indianapolis Star]Future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) travels to Kingman, Arizona, to move in with his old Army friend Michael Fortier (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990, November 1991 - Summer 1992, and March 1993) in Fortier’s trailer home, where he tells Fortier he intends to carry out some unnamed violent action against the government in response to the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and After). McVeigh briefly works as a security guard for State Security. Fortier will later recall, “I thought he was still in the Army when he showed up at my door,” noting McVeigh’s tight blond crewcut and his camouflage clothing. “When you saw him, it was like he never left. Actually, I never thought he would leave the service. It was just him.… I have to say McVeigh was a good soldier, a much better soldier than I ever was. His shoes were always spit shined and his clothes always pressed. I would put them on straight out of the dryer.” When they first met in the Army, Fortier will recall, he did not like McVeigh, who is from upstate New York (see 1987-1988). “He had this real New York attitude, real rude and blunt,” Fortier will recall. “He just had no tact.” But, he will continue, “you just got used to his attitude.” Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement, another member of the same company who also sometimes went shooting with McVeigh on the weekends, will later recall, “Fortier was probably his best friend.” Fortier’s mother Irene Fortier has a different recollection of McVeigh, remembering him as “polite and courteous.” McVeigh and Fortier share a dislike of the US government—in the front yard of his trailer, Fortier flies both an American flag and a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag often connected with right-wing militia groups—and a fascination with weaponry. Fortier keeps a half-dozen or more guns in his home, as is commonplace in many northern Arizona homes. McVeigh tells him it is time to take violent action against the US government (see August 21-31, 1992). McVeigh stays in Kingman for around five months, though he soon moves into a rented trailer in the Canyon West Mobile and RV trailer park, and gives Fortier’s address as his residence on an application to rent a private mail box, #206, at the Mail Room (see February - July 1994) under the alias “Tim Tuttle” (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994). He and Fortier discuss forming a militia to fight the “New World Order” (see September 11, 1990), which, they believe, is represented by the government’s fatal assault against the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). [New York Times, 5/6/1995; New York Times, 5/21/1995; Stickney, 1996, pp. 151; PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996; Serrano, 1998, pp. 79; Douglas O. Linder, 2001] During the first weeks of his stay at the Fortiers’ home, McVeigh visits his friend Roger Moore, an Arkansas gun dealer (see March 1993). At some time during his stay, he uses methamphetamines, probably obtained from Fortier and in the company of Fortier. He writes his father Bill during this time and asks him not to divulge his address. [PBS Frontline, 1/22/1996] In October 1993, McVeigh leaves Arizona to move in with another Army friend, Terry Nichols (see October 12, 1993 - January 1994).

As the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue (OR—see 1986) prepares to launch a wave of protests during its summer “Cities of Refuge” offensive (see July 9-19, 1993), the Orlando Sentinel publishes an extensive examination of the organization, titled “Inside Operation Rescue.” The article examines the large number of protesters who have just graduated from the Institute of Mobilized Prophetic Activated Christian Training (IMPACT), a 12-week “boot camp” aimed at giving protesters intensive training in protest and harassment tactics against abortion clinics, medical personnel, and clients. Tactics Glean Information, Gain Access, Enable Harassment and 'Sidewalk Counseling' - Some tactics, the article notes, are familiar to private detectives: “[t]rack down license plate numbers to obtain addresses of clinic employees, then follow them to supermarkets, hotels, and other public places where they can be confronted. Snap photographs. Run video cameras. Find Social Security numbers and check financial records. Infiltrate clinics by posing as patients. Befriend a clinic worker’s son, then preach to him about the sins of his mother. Dig up dirt through court and other government records. File as many lawsuits as possible.” Lawyers and private detectives explained to the IMPACT members how far they could push the freedom of speech and privacy laws in order to successfully harass and intimidate medical personnel and clients, including the use of sophisticated surveillance equipment, of toxic chemicals to be sprayed into clinics, and of bomb threats and death threats left on home and clinic answering machines. (OR officially denies using such tactics.) The graduates learned the techniques of “sidewalk counseling,” which involves targeting pregnant women and “counseling” them not to have abortions, using dolls and photographs of aborted fetuses when necessary. They learned how to use their own children to shield them from police officers, sometimes even pushing the children into police cordons to be arrested. Others learned how to masquerade as women seeking pregnancy counseling in order to gain access to the clinics, and how to disrupt operations once inside the clinic; these women are called “truth team” members. Some were trained to befriend pregnant women or their family members, and use information gleaned from the encounters to target them at their homes or places of work. Some even learned a technique they call “invoking a curse” on recalcitrant pregnant women or medical personnel, a technique one OR member calls the “save ‘em or slay ‘em” tactic.” (One pro-choice activist tells reporter Sarah Tippit, “I’ve had these people stand in my face and scream at the top of their lungs, ‘I pray for your death in the name of God, in the name of Jesus.’” 'FemiNazis' and 'Human Pesticides' - The group’s rhetoric includes labeling birth control pills “human pesticides,” and calling women who support abortion choices “femi-Nazis,” “lesbians who want to deny the true role of women,” and “Aryan supremacists” who fear that poor minorities will someday overrun them. One woman explains to a reporter how Christian women practice birth control: “God will open and close your womb” as necessary. Practicing Techniques on Florida Clinic - OR calls the training “preparation for spiritual warfare.” Florida resident Meredith Raney, an IMPACT graduate, says, “Anything we can learn and use to embarrass or encourage anyone, especially doctors, to stop working, we’ll use it.” The Melbourne, Florida, Aware Woman Clinic for Choice is targeted for “practice” protests by IMPACT graduates readying for the summer offensive. The protesters jam the telephones of the clinic with thousands of phone calls designed to keep potential clients from contacting the clinic, and swarm the clinic on a daily basis. In response, the clinic and pro-choice groups assemble a group of defenders—bikers, off-duty police officers, and volunteers whose responsibility is to keep the protesters from invading the clinic or blocking traffic to and from it. A surveillance video camera and microphone record the events taking place in the parking lot and on the sidewalks around the clinic. On the day Tippit covers the protest at Aware, many of the techniques are in effect, including “sidewalk counseling,” harassment and challenging of clients (some of whom have removed the license plates from their cars, or walk through the crowds of protesters brandishing baseball bats or stun guns), and pushing children into the arms of police officers to be arrested. [Orlando Sentinel, 6/6/1993]OR Leader Tells of Training - In a February 1993 interview conducted for the anti-abortion publication The Forerunner, OR leader Keith Tucci told of the two months of training his organization was holding for the event, which, according to the interview, is “not just to block abortion clinics, but to also influence every facet of society in ridding our nation of legalized child killing.” Interviewer Jay Rogers, referring to the 1991 Wichita blockade, asked, “So instead of having one Wichita, there will be six?” and Tucci responded, “Exactly.” Tucci said that participants would be taught “everything from ‘spiritual warfare’ to ‘How to use the media before they use you.’” He went on to say that OR’s intent was to dissuade communities from allowing abortions to be practiced within their limits, and asked: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all the politicians let abortion be legal, but there wasn’t a community in the country who would let an abortionist practice?… We’ve got to make it intolerable and only then will we make it illegal.” [The Forerunner, 2/1993]

In Tiburon, California, Dr. Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California, opens a package mailed to his home and brought inside by his daughter Joanna. The package contains a wooden box, which itself contains a bomb. The resulting explosion blows off several of Epstein’s fingers, breaks his arm, and causes a number of abdominal injuries. Epstein is known as a researcher who has helped identify a gene that may contribute to Down’s Syndrome. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 6/25/1993; Washington Post, 1998; World of Forensic Science, 1/1/2005] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). Kaczynski once worked as a professor at UC-Berkeley. This is the first bomb known to have been detonated by Kaczynski in over six years (see February 20, 1987). Another device mailed by Kaczynski will detonate two days later (see June 24, 1993).

The assistant managing editor of the New York Times receives a letter from a person or persons claiming to be from an anarchist group called “FC.” The letter, mailed from Sacramento just before the explosions that injured two university officials (see June 22, 1993 and June 24, 1993), includes a code number to ensure that any future communication from the “group” will be genuine. [BBC, 11/12/1987] The letter will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996). In previous bombings, Kaczynski etched the initials “FC” onto bomb components. “FC” is later found to stand for “Freedom Club.” No such group exists; Kaczynski operates entirely on his own. [Washington Post, 1/23/1998]

An FBI recreation of one of the Unabomber’s explosive devices, on display at the Newseum in Washington, DC. [Source: Newseum / Wikimedia]Computer scientist David Gelernter of Yale University opens a package mailed to his office. The package contains a bomb. It explodes in Gelernter’s hands, severely injuring and ultimately disfiguring him. [BBC, 11/12/1987; Washington Post, 1998] The school’s sprinkler system douses a small blaze started by the bomb. Gelernter is in shock from his injuries; he races down five flights of stairs to the infirmary, dripping blood and fending off bystanders with cries of “Leave me alone!” He suffers extensive injuries to his abdomen, chest, face, and hands. Within a day, the Gelernter bombing is added to the “UNABOM” list of serial bombings, along with the University of California bombing from two days earlier (see June 22, 1993). Federal authorities are dismayed that the “Unabomber” bombings have restarted after more than six years of inactivity (see February 20, 1987). Gelernter may have been targeted because of his invention of a computer language that allows desktop computers to process information in a much more powerful fashion. FBI Director William Sessions says: “The FBI will go back and look at all the bombings of a similar character. It’s the logical thing to be done, and it will be done.” [Washington Post, 6/25/1993] The bombing will later be shown to be the work of Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber” (see April 3, 1996).

ACLA protester advocates the ‘execution’ of abortion providers. [Source: Ms. Magazine]Former Presbyterian minister Paul Hill, an outspoken opponent of abortion, writes what he calls a “Defensive Action Statement” justifying the murder of abortion doctor David Gunn by anti-abortion activist Michael Griffin (see March 10, 1993). Hill and many like-minded anti-abortion activists split from the larger network of organizations to form the explicitly violent American Coalition for Life Activists (ACLA). A year later, Hill will murder a Florida doctor and his bodyguard (see July 29, 1994). [Kushner, 2003, pp. 39] The statement reads: “We, the undersigned, declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary to defend innocent human life including the use of force. We proclaim that whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child. We assert that if Michael Griffin did in fact kill David Gunn, his use of lethal force was justifiable provided it was carried out for the purpose of defending the lives of unborn children. Therefore, he ought to be acquitted of the charges against him.” The statement is signed by Hill and a number of other anti-abortion activists, including Michael Bray (see September 1994) and Donald Spitz, the leader of the extremist organization Army of God (see 1982). It is published on the Army of God’s Web site. [Army of God, 7/1993]

Randy Weaver and attorney Linda Thompson. [Source: Bonfire's Blog (.com)]A jury acquits white separatist Randy Weaver and a fellow separatist of murdering a US marshal during the Ruby Ridge standoff (see August 31, 1992), a verdict the Southern Poverty Law Center will later call “a stinging rebuke to federal law enforcement.” Evidence will later emerge that shows the FBI changed its normal rules of engagement during the standoff and later lied about it. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

The anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue (OR—see 1986) targets abortion and women’s clinics in seven states, as part of a 10-day event it calls “Cities of Refuge.” It intends to close or disrupt clinics in Cleveland, Ohio; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; San Jose, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; and several cities in central Florida. The event harks back to the 1991 “Summer of Mercy,” which blockaded three clinics in Wichita, Kansas, for 46 days (see July-August 1991), and a smaller blockade in Buffalo, New York, in 1992. City councils and police officials in Cleveland, San Jose, Philadelphia, and St. Paul are taking measures to ensure the safety of doctors, staff members, and patients; Philadelphia police officer John Norris says, “We’re ready for anything that comes down the pike.” Activist Eric Johns and his wife Michelle are in Jackson preparing for the protests. He tells reporters: “We hope to put these places out of business, expose abortionists to their community, embarrass them for what they do, expose staff workers at these places, and eventually shut down the whole isly abortion industry in the state of Mississippi. I think I have a biblical responsibility and am commanded by God [sic] to do what I’m doing.” Jeanie Hollis of the Mississippi Women’s Medical Clinic in Jackson responds: “They will not close us down. If a patient wants an abortion, we will figure out a way to get them in the clinic.” Dianne Straus of the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Women’s Center says she fears more anti-abortion violence, and recalls the recent murder of a Florida abortion provider, Dr. David Gunn (see March 10, 1993). [Associated Press, 7/5/1993; Orlando Sentinel, 7/19/1993] As a result of the protests, Florida Judge John Rudd sentences OR leader Keith Tucci to a month in jail for violating a court order during a protest, and blames Tucci for a number of other “good people” being arrested. Rudd actually gives Tucci six months in jail, but suspends the remainder of the sentence on the condition that Tucci obey the court order not to demonstrate inside a “buffer zone” around the Aware Woman Center for Choice in Melbourne, Florida. Rudd also finds 38 other anti-abortion protesters guilty of criminal contempt, and gives them each six months’ probation. Rudd notes an instance in a videotape from one of the protests, when Tucci screamed that a police officer was hurting his two-year-old child; the officer actually placed a protective hand on the child’s back. Rudd accuses Tucci of “hypocrisy and showmanship.” Tucci calls the verdicts an injustice. [Orlando Sentinel, 7/10/1993] A dozen OR activists are arrested in Dallas, after ignoring police orders to stop blocking access to a Dallas woman’s clinic [Orlando Sentinel, 7/14/1993] , and several hundred are arrested in Philadelphia. [Orlando Sentinel, 7/19/1993]

Geremy von Rineman and his girlfriend Jill Scarborough, members of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973 and July 26, 1993), are arrested for plotting to bomb Los Angeles’s largest black church. Six others who are affiliated with the group are also arrested. The eight are accused of plotting to instigate a racial war by bombing the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a major black religious institution in South Central Los Angeles, and assassinating Rodney King, the victim of a videotaped beating by white police officers. The King murder was planned for August 4, the sentencing date for two policemen convicted of federal civil rights violations in connection with the beating. The arrests are timed to stop a letter-bombing plot targeting an Orange County rabbi. The indictment also states that other civil rights figures are targeted for attack, including: leaders of the NAACP and the National Urban League; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; the Reverend Al Sharpton; rap music stars Eazy-E and members of the group Public Enemy; as well as unspecified “Jewish leaders.” The police seize pipe bombs and machine guns, racist paraphernelia including Confederate and Nazi flags, and a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler. Christopher David Fisher is charged with conspiracy to bomb the church. Von Rineman, Scarborough, Josh Lee, Chris Nadal, and Doris Nadal are charged with a variety of weapons offenses. Two unidentified juveniles are charged with unspecified crimes, though Time magazine will later claim that one of the juveniles had been charged with a pipe-bomb attack against a “half Asian and half Mexican” member of the “Spur Posse,” a gang of Lakewood, California, teenagers who awarded points among themselves for sexual conquests. Fisher, a grade school teacher, is the head of a small “skinhead” gang called the Fourth Reich Skins. Rineman is not only a member of COTC, he is a member of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), as is Scarborough. [Anti-Defamation League, 7/6/1999; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Police arrest two Washington State residents, Jeremiah Gordon Knesal and Wayne Paul Wooten, both 19, for shoplifting at a mall parking lot in Salinas, California. Knesal is a leader of a local chapter of the Church of the Creator (COTC—see 1973, Early 1992 - January 1993, and July 15, 1993). Upon searching Knesal’s car, officers find three pipe bombs, four loaded long-barrel weapons, military apparel, ammunition, wigs, climbing gear, white supremacist literature, and a page from a Portland, Oregon, telephone book listing Jewish agencies and synagogues. Under questioning from the FBI, Knesal confesses to his involvement in the July 20 firebombing of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) office in Tacoma, Washington. Knesal implicates Mark Frank Kowaalski, an ex-convict and member of the “skinhead” group American Front, as his partner in the bombing. FBI agents arrest Kowaalski the same day in Seattle, and find evidence linking him to the bombing as well as Knesal and Wooten. Agents will later say that the Tacoma bombing was part of a larger plan to attack Jewish and African-American institutions, military installations (particularly those housing submarines), gay and lesbian gathering places, and radio and television stations. The three also reportedly planned to assassinate two rap music performers, Ice Cube and Ice-T. [Anti-Defamation League, 1993; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/1999]

Dr. George Tiller, a women’s health doctor and abortion provider, is shot once in each arm outside the Women’s Health Care Services clinic in Wichita, Kansas, by anti-abortion activist Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon. Shannon has a long history of violent attacks against abortion clinics on the West Coast, using both fire and acid to disrupt or close women’s health care clinics. [Washington Post, 1998; Kushner, 2003, pp. 39] Shannon is a member of the violent anti-abortion group Army of God (see 1982). After her arrest, she will tell authorities that her attempt to murder Tiller was a means of “enforcing God’s will.” Police will find a copy of the secret “Army of God Manual” (see Early 1980s) buried in her backyard. [Extremist Groups: Information for Students, 1/1/2006] In 2009, Tiller will be murdered by another anti-abortion activist (see May 31, 2009).

A burned Hummer at the vandalized West Covina dealership. [Source: Anti-Defamation League]Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) activists set fire to around 40 Hummers and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) at a West Covina, California, dealership. The fires cause around $2 million of damage. “Fat Lazy Americans” and “ELF” are among slogans painted on the vehicles. ELF routinely takes credit for vandalizing SUVs in dozens of other cities, and explains that the vehicles are being burned “to remove the profit motive from the killing of the natural environment.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

A Florida couple affiliated with the so-called “Patriot Movement” (see February 1992) guns down an Opelika, Alabama, police sergeant investigating a disturbance involving the woman’s young son. The couple will later be convicted of capital murder. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

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